NaNoWriMo: The 30 Day Novelling Challenge

NaNoWriMo, the shortened version of National Novel Writing Month. It's occurred every year since 1999, but I only found out about it in 2008. It's the one time of year a bunch of crazy writers come together to try and write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. 30 days, 1,667 words a day, and if you play your cards right, 1 completed novel come December 1st. When I came across NaNoWriMo in 2008 everything about it appealed to me.

I was a junior in high school at the time with a knack for starting stories and getting five pages in before quitting. My ideas were weak, my writing weaker, and my motivation weakest. Yet when I heard about NaNoWriMo I thought, "This is it. This is where I will strike my novelling gold." It was October 28th, the night I found out about NaNoWriMo, so I knew I had a limited amount of time to come up with a plot before midnight on the first. That didn't matter though because I was excited. I'd always done well with challenges. I worked well under deadlines. Unfortunately, I was naïve to the writing process and things didn't go as expected.

Going into NaNoWriMo fairly uncertain of what I was going to write about, I started out well. I came up with a scene where my main female character killed herself and wound up in the afterlife. She went under an operation and was given the characteristics of certain deadly sins. I got 14,000 words in by day eight and then I quit.

I didn't know where my novel was going, I wasn't sure what it was doing, and I was noticing a lot of similarities to a series by Scott Westerfeld called "Uglies". The only bright spot on my horizon was that I'd gotten further into that novel than any other I'd attempted. With a little over a quarter of the goal met, I was proud of myself. I was taking three AP classes that year and was swamped with homework anyway. Even though I quit, I never felt guilty about it. How many writers could say that at 16 they'd written fourteen thousand words in eight days?

When 2009 rolled around I knew what to expect. I had gone through the Adoptables on the site forums and decided on a plot. I don't remember now what it was, because a couple days before NaNoWriMo kicked off I was seized by another idea. I had planned to discard it, or lock it away for later, but suddenly my ability to flesh out my original plot stopped dead in its tracks. I wasn't able to write another word, so I was forced to pick up the new plot, dust it off and work on it until midnight on the first hit.

This was my most prolific year because I managed to finish in fifteen days. My novel's working title was Blessed In Jersey, a Christian romance novel that poured out of me at the most awkward of times. I was a senior in high school at that time and wound up spending more time in class writing down ideas than paying attention. I'd come home and spend hours before the computer typing up what I'd decided on, doing things with my characters I didn't quite understand. I listened to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin all fifteen of those days and somehow they became a backdrop for my novelling adventure that year. They even found their way into my story, forever saved on the word document that captured my first real novel.

On November 15th at 9:41 pm I crossed the 50,000 word mark and called my novel complete. That day I had written the last ten thousand words over the span of twelve hours. I nearly killed myself to finish that novel, depriving my body of food, water and sleep so I could officially say I was a novelist. It was worth it because in the end I had never been more proud of myself. I think I cried.

I decided not to touch my novel again until December. I thought I'd edit it then and maybe look into getting it published. Unfortunately, I only looked at it once and then never had the motivation to do so again. It was sloppily put together, there were scenes missing, some things didn't make sense; it was a mess. Where had I come up with this slop? I wondered. I didn't even like the ending, despite being so in love with it at the time of writing it. How could I have been proud of myself? Just because I finished a novel?

It made me wonder if finishing a novel went hand-in-hand with editing it, because if so, 2009 was as much of a bust as 2008.

The same thing that happened the last week of October in 2009 happened again in 2010. I had a plot idea that was golden until another swooped in and pushed it out of its place. Another Christian romance, another prolific year, though not quite in the same way. I had grown as a writer over the eleven months that had passed since the previous NaNoWriMo, so when I reached 50,000 words my novel was only half finished. But I had worked hard on that novel. I had made something beautiful. The words had come to me easily and splayed themselves across the page easily.

I hit 51,000 words and chapter eight of fifteen when I quit. NaNoWriMo was over and I'd gotten the word count. With the end of the challenge came the end of my motivation. While I'd started something amazing and had grown with it, I couldn't force myself to continue. It was painful to see my novel sit on my hard drive taking up space, only half finished, but it was even more painful to write. It was like the end of NaNoWriMo signified the end of that novel. What wasn't complete never would be. I haven't looked at it since and I don't know if I ever will.

With NaNoWriMo 2011 little more than a day away, I haven't decided on a plot for this year. No Christian romance ideas have jumped out at me and the only thing I've truly contemplated was a painful retelling of one of the most confusing periods of time in my life. Since then I've moved on to a novel about a serial killer, a bloody gang war, and finally even contemplated a Hunger Games-esque idea involving the over population of earth at the end of the century.

I haven't gone into a NaNoWriMo without a plot since 2008 and I ended up quitting less than half way through that year. Factor in that I'm supposed to be giving birth to my son in the next two weeks and you've got plenty of reasons for me not to even attempt year four. But I am, despite the fact that I have nothing going for me. Who knows. Maybe this will be the year I get to 50,000 words and like my novel enough to edit it. Or maybe I'll crash and burn without so much as a backward glance. I love NaNoWriMo, don't get me wrong; it's the time of the year that I write the most, throwing words at a blank word document and watching them create something beautiful. But this year is looking terribly bleak and despite my hope that I'll continue this winning streak I'm on, I'm afraid the only thing in my favor is that I'm going to attempt it no matter what the circumstances are.

30 days, 1,667 words a day. Never have those numbers looked so terrifying.