The pressure is on. November is National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.
Now in my third year participating, I am closer than ever before to actually achieving 50,000 words in a month. For reference, on my first 24 Hour Comic Book Day, I produced seven pages (genre: memoir); year two I finished twenty four pages (genre: sci-fi); and finally, in the third year I completed twenty four pages – words and pictures (genre: historical fiction (hi-fi?)). Content-wise, the quality went from good ('09) to bad ('10) to ugly ('11).
2012 was a rebuilding year…
…or maybe I was lazy about doing it again because I’d experienced the feeling of accomplishment…
…or maybe it was my second year of grad school...
2013 was my first attempt at NaNoWriMo.
Year one I tried to type my novel on a computer (genre: li-fi (literary fiction)), so I spent the month mesmerized by a glowing screen and accomplished very little. Last November, year two, I saw some improvement; handwriting my novel on the train led to finishing six chapters out of the nine that I had planned (genre: hi-li-sci-fi). Truth be told, I had no idea what the novel was going to be about when I started or even while I was writing it (hence the genre(s)). Every day I just kept the pen moving, like my students used to do during free writing, confident that I probably wasn’t going to hit 50,000, but that was okay with me. I made chapter headings on the first day, just like I used to storyboard the first hour of 24hr CBD, not that they helped me figure out what was going to happen. I just thought they sounded cool. For example, chapter one is called ‘The Incident’. I didn’t know (still don’t) what the incident was, so I got all the way up to something big happening and then cut to chapter two, which began with:
“It has been twelve days since the incident.”
So here we are in 2015. Year three (genre: adventure). I have been writing every day on the train while I commute, except for November 1st, which I spent cleaning my room (standard for my writing process). Theoretically I will be able to get a novel done, but suddenly there is a lot more at stake than just writing a book! Lacking foresight, in January I started PopSugar’s 2015 Reading Challenge and I also set a personal goal on Goodreads to read fifty books this year, which I thought was decent until a coworker told me last week she’s almost hit her goal for this year of reading one hundred fifty! Most of my reading time is during my commute, but this month I am devoting those two hours of the day to writing, so what to do??
The options are: forego sleep for the duration of 2015, or, read at my desk during the month of December (tempting, but librarians don’t really get to do that), or, complete my reading challenges with graphic novels and picture books. I am more than okay with the last option, so I am saved, but in 2016 I am going to have to be more organized about all of this.
Or maybe it will be a rebuilding year.
Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month.
