I love NaNoWriMo. I love the camaraderie, the insane urge to pull 1700 words a day from my aching brain, the people I meet who are just as nutty as I am, and the crushing failure of not even coming close to 50,000 words. I've participated in NaNo the last four years and this was, by far, the worst I've produced at a whopping 350-ish words written on a plane coming back from Seattle.
Am I upset? Disheartened? Envious of friends sporting a snazzy new "winner" button as their avatars? Nah. It was never the end result for me - though I have to admit, last year's print out of my Winner's certificate was on the fridge next to the grocery list and Vyolette's smeary, licked on self-portrait for a month - it was always proof to myself that I could do anything I set my mind to. As long as my mind didn't have stray thoughts of showering or speaking to my children in full sentences.
Congratulations to my NaNo friends, those who persevered and those who fell by the wayside. I will rejoin the NaNo fray next November. This November was full of family and new projects that would not have been possible if I had never dipped my toes in your bad ass soup of prose for three years beforehand.
Photo credit: mhpbooks.com
Three cheers for losing! I think I wrote 1000 times more than you, but I still didn't win. I may try to break 36,000 by tomorrow, but it's not looking good.
ReplyDeleteAt least I'm in some very good company! NaNo is a wonderful tool for kicking the muse into turbo, but mine is in desperate need of a 50,000 mile tune-up. ;)
ReplyDeleteMel, you have 4:50 left to November, get a move on, would ya!
ReplyDeleteBeth, I say forget the Word Wars to the Death, we do Word Wars to the Painnnnnnnnnnnnn - as long as I get to be Fezzik.
I wonder if I had signed up if I would have forced myself to write more this month. I still think life would have gotten in the way. I feel better that I'm not rushing this WIP. Others write themselves easily - if this one needs a slower pace - I gotta "feed the need".
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