It’s almost November that around here that means NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo is a huge part of my life. Historically it’s important. Winning my first NaNo honestly changed my life. It showed me that I could write a novel, it infused me with confidence about my writing (which is odd because that novel was freaking terrible) and it was the beginning of NaNoLJers. It lead, directly or otherwise, to my leaving my former job and really making writing more than a hobby.
I’ve done NaNo every year since 2003, I’ve won every year since 2005. There is no challenge in it for me anymore.
I could just try for more words, but despite the whole quantity over quality thing, simply writing more for the sake of writing more doesn’t make sense to me. As it is I keep writing until the story is over, I don’t just stop at 50,000 but intentionally padding it wouldn’t really make NaNo more challenging, it would just make it take more time.
A couple years ago Danica did NaNo. That helped me stay engaged. I got one of her friends involved as well and saw it as my sub-mission to help herd the two of them toward the finish line. It worked. I wrote my 50k and helped Dani and her friend reach their goals through write-ins, pretzels and encouragement.
The next year (last year) we created teams on NaNoLJers and I used that as my motivating factor — I wanted to win NaNo and lead my team to winning the NaNoLJers cup. It worked. I was engaged with the process, I finished my novel and helped my team win the cup. Yay!
This year… this year I don’t have any external motivation and I’m not feeling it. I’m detached. Danica is doing NaNo again, and we have teams on NaNoLJers. It’s my intention to help motivate both my child and my team toward victory, and of course I’ll write my 50,000 words (at least), but I’m very lethargic about it. I wish I were impatient for the month to start, or excited, or hell, even nervous, but really… mostly I’m bored.
And that sucks.
Especially since I talked the teacher I volunteer with into doing NaNoWriMo in her classroom this year.
Hopefully I’ll find some motivation somewhere, some driving force that will infuse me with some enthusiasm. The grade twos, maybe. If I don’t I’ll still do NaNo, I’ll still write 50,000 words (or more) on See The Sky Again, and I’ll still win, but it would sure be nice to enjoy it while I’m doing it.
How about you? Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Are you excited about it? What are your goals?
