Choose Your Own NaNoWriMo
Writing *something* > writing everything or nothing
Yesterday, I didn’t realize it was November 1 until the late afternoon. I was preoccupied with a clogged drain, doing laundry, and other unglamorous matters. Then I saw someone online talking about National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) and thought oh shoot, it’s November!
I have writer friends and past podcast guests who often participate in NaNoWriMo and have even gotten published books out of it. I have friends who never even consider doing it. NaNoWriMo has never really been my jam, because I don’t like writing fast and dirty when I’m trying to draft a novel that I know I want and/or need to finish. The pace of it (about 1667 words a day, every day, including any holidays that miiight come up in November) can be counterproductive to my preferred way of working.
But when I was giving it some thought yesterday evening, I decided I’d like to try to tap into the collective energy of the project and use it in a way that works for me. I’ve been very burned out and in a long phase of writing being a “have to” and not a “want to,” so I’m using NaNoWriMo to try to reconnect to the “want to” part of writing and dabble in a variety of unformed ideas in search of hooking something I actually want to reel in.
I’ll approach it as “write a lot of whatever I want in November” and try to accumulate that 50k words across any and all want-to writing vs. writing to do that all on one book. Last night’s 1700 words were a combination of journaling and picking up an old for-fun project I haven’t looked at in a while.
My ultimate goal is to rediscover what I like about the writing process outside of the world of publishing.
If you’re thinking about NaNoWriMo but don’t want to follow the rules, make up your own! Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you want to write, always remember that 400 words may not be 1667 but it’s a lot more than zero.
This poem by Denise Levertov is doing something for me in this dark political season.
So, Elon Musk owns Twitter now and a lot of people are leaving. I’m still there but watching the space with great skepticism, curious how it will play out. I can see how writers might still find it useful as a tool for connection and promotion, and I can also see why they’d want to leave. But then, that’s been an issue for a long time, even under old management. If you’re a heavy user of the platform, I’m curious what your plans are! Comment or reply if you have Thoughts.
Now that the This Creative Life book is out in all formats, I’m just kind of sitting back and watching what it does. I will likely run some holiday price promotions starting at the end of November, though I’m not sure exactly how that works with the audio as some of those platforms set their own pricing.
After I’m back from my little writing retreat, I’ll be back to making podcast episodes so make sure you’re subscribed in your favorite app!
This Creative Life is a book, a newsletter, and a podcast from me, Sara Zarr, about reading between the lines of a writing life. The newsletter and podcast are free; buying the book helps support them and me. Sharing the newsletter is a great help, too!
I used to to do NANO every year for the first four or five years I was writing. But haven't done it since as it makes me crazy. :) I'm one of those people that if I've created a deadline I do everything to make it, even if it means not sleeping (not good for me). Instead I make goals every year for a total word count for the year and a "hoped for" number of release titles. It's much more sane than a one month thing.
Regarding Twitter. I did leave it on Sunday, giving up 15K followers (less than a third really paid attention to me). I'd been thinking about leaving for the past three years because I no longer thought it was really giving me anything I wanted. The people I follow also post the same content (or similar) to their FB page, their Instagram page, LinkedIn and other places. In its early days I loved Twitter. I knew how to build my platform an how to curate my feed. But I haven't loved it for a good four to five years now. However, I felt I "had to" be there. Musk taking over was the last straw that made me say enough. I'm betting there will be another twitter-like platform that will be created and, I hope, become a better version of the old Twitter. On the other hand, in many ways, TikTok is the new Twitter version--it's just video-based.
Sara, my NaNo goal is like yours. Not that I want to write garbage to get the word count up, but I'm giving myself permission to play fast and loose enough to get around my inner critic. So far so good, as of Day 2.