It is bewildering to me to look at the calendar and see December at the header. The cliché of 'where has the year gone' is smacking me right in the face and all I can do is offer the other cheek.
Don’t get me wrong, I love December. I love the holidays, the parties, the endless list of opportunities for things to do, but it also brings along an end. Some years I welcome the end and approach it as a fresh start but more often than not I see another year passed, another year older, another year entrenched in some routine.
This year December 1 has a new significance; it is the first day post NaNoWriMo2014. The month of November for me has been challenging but rich in lesson learned when it comes to writing and how I perceive myself as an author.
To recap a bit; NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a grass roots social event that aims to motivate writers all over the world to finally write those stories they say they have inside them. With a daily word goal of 1,667 and thirty days, come the 30th of the month you should have 50,000 words of a first draft on paper ready to progress with as you see fit.
This was my first year attempting NaNo and I fell short of the 50,000. As of this morning my draft has 31,025 words. Despite not meeting the 50k mark I am extremely proud of the results of the month's efforts. Here are some of the most important things I learned this past month:
-Writing is a job.
If you want to write for a living that means it is a skill that you are paid to perform. It requires time, effort, talent, and rigidity. Living a writer's life is romanticized but make no mistake, it is difficult.
-Writing is pain.
I don’t mean the emotional kind, although this is a lot of that too, I mean physically. You will get calluses on your fingers, your neck with hurt, your eyes will burn, your butt will go numb. Of all of the ailments the fingers were the worst. Not only do I have to type consistently for my job but the added keystrokes of 1,667 words a day really took a toll.
-Consistency is damn near impossible.
NaNo expects that you write every day. The forces of the universe don’t give a crap about your regularly scheduled writing time. The Monday to Friday sessions weren’t too bad because it just naturally has a better routine about it but weekends and nights were tough. I missed several days just out of unexpected scheduling conflicts.
-My attention span is zero to none.
I have no idea how I make it through daily life. I swear when I am seated in front of task that needs doing I can find ANYTHING else to focus on. I would write a sentence or two and need to change the song on my iPod, another sentence and then I would see dog hair on my floor, a paragraph and the dishes magically needed to be cleaned that moment! The final count of 30k is evidence only to how involved I get in the writing once I get going. If things are on track I can ride the momentum for a bit before the inevitable distraction comes into play. This is the one area I can work on getting better at so my future projects progress more smoothly and efficiently.
-My writing space is not very inviting.
In my apartment I use my second bedroom as a library/office. Sounds like the perfect place to write doesn’t it? Surrounded by books and typewriters and dark wood? Ya, wrong. I found it very stale, uncomfortable and too formal. I did most of my writing on the couch or in coffee shops. I think the coffee shops allowed me to get out of my cave and make an event out of the session and the couch was more for comfort. The downside of both of these options is that it required me to use my laptop which is clunky and outdated. I have a beautiful iMac at my office desk but I did not want to sit in there. In moving forward on other projects I will need to decide what changes need to be made for the space to be used. I need to concentrate and commit but if I won't get in the room then I'm done before I even start.
On this December 1st I am glad that I took on the challenge of NaNoWriMo2014 as it has taught me invaluable lessons. I plan to take the month to read for pleasure and relax. The start of 2015 will bring the final edits of my first completed manuscript and will be spent getting the book into production and finalized! I have several other projects that are begging for my attention and when the time comes I will follow my momentum and make progress on the one that is drawing me most towards it.
Will I go back to this first draft and continue on? I don’t know, I will leave the option open however. Although it was only 30 days worth of writing, the effort is there and perhaps it will surprise me with its potential at some point in the future.
NaNoWriMo2014 is at an end but a writer's life never stops.
Write On -T
No comments:
Post a Comment