When I last posted, I promised to dish on what it was like to encounter the midway point of NaNoWriMo. At the time of the post, I was nearly on target with the expected word quota, and I felt like all was going well despite the difficulties in carving out writing time every day. However, I’d been warned by my spouse about the “messy middle” or the mid-month slump, that, when it arrived, would mark the slowing of said progress—quite rightly, as it happens. Once we hit the Ides of November, the effort to stay on track or even get a bit ahead shifted into a race to catch up.
Between writing my last blog post and the onslaught of more activities, my daily word count dropped significantly, though I wrote each day. Perhaps I should have expected that several days would end up being rather unproductive when I had so little downtime. Even when the words seem to flow effortlessly, writing is mentally demanding. I felt exhausted when I contemplated what I would next write while my to-do list was competing for mental space. Since we also were traveling most weekends, I soon discovered that I’d much rather chat with my spouse than wrestle an unfriendly, new-to-me laptop. Particularly when it decided to have technical issues while said tech support was negotiating the NJ State Turnpike. Even on a train, the urge to nap instead of write was sorely tempting when I already was overtired.
There is a reason why some writers attempt to write as much as they can during their first several days of NaNoWriMo. In a sense, it acts as a form of insurance against losing their momentum at a later point, whether it’s fatigue or other unforeseen difficulties that interfere. For most people I met,1 participating in NaNoWriMo became increasingly difficult past the halfway point for various reasons that could be summarized as “life”. So, days with low word counts went from manageable to daunting for me, neatly accompanied with the worrying sensation that I was not writing my best. And the sure knowledge that 50,000 words was merely a good start for a novel.
Despite reminding myself regularly that the goal was to get a novel started at all, I knew my tendency towards completionism would rear its ugly head: I was going to make my life difficult to finish those 50,000 words by 30 November. And so I did. For the remainder of November, I wrote more than 1667 words on most days, often late at night. And, at the end of November, a full day behind my spouse, I finished.
Well, I finished 50,000 words in a month, the novel writer’s equivalent of a marathon. The draft itself still needs to be completed. And I’ll probably need to write several better drafts, for that matter. That aside, the idea that seemed like it would make a fun short story somehow stretched itself into a grander writing endeavor, and I’m looking forward to writing the rest of it (at a more reasonable pace). I don’t know if I’d attempt NaNoWriMo again or if it’s given me any great insights into writing more habitually,2 but I’m grateful that I undertook this challenge to transform this kernel of a story into an actual work in progress. It rather makes me wonder whether I should attempt a less rigorous challenge come the New Year in lieu of a resolution. Until then, I’m going to enjoy the break from my novel and the holidays!
Happy Holidays!
NOTES:
Rita E. Gould: An Artful Sequence of Words 