GRIFF VS NANOWRIMO – THE AFTERMATH

 

 

 

I ended at 42,492… but that is by no means a failure.

HI, I’M GRIFF, AND I’M EXHAUSTED

At 10:30, I decided to check my word count and saw that I was about eight thousand words short of fifty thousand.  For a brief moment, since I had an hour and a half to go, I debated writing pure bullshit just to hit the fifty thousand mark, but I realized that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself I did that. 

I know that for me, the characters and their stories come first.

With that realization, I got more out of Nanowrimo this year through “losing” than hitting the 50K mark.  I found that my writing’s gotten much, much stronger over the past year, and I’ve learned a lot as far as structure and pacing is concerned.  Since I’m a bit of a self-needler about things (okay, I relentlessly give myself shit over the tiniest things, so this is no big stretch) I should have seen the signs earlier about the goal- as the month progressed, I found myself caring less and less about the 50K word count mark and more about the story- I’m not saying that every word I wrote this past month is a keeper, but I’m light years ahead of the bullshit I wrote last year, which is a huge plus.

I made some mistakes though…

MY HEALTH IS IMPORTANT BUT I DON’T CARE ‘CUZ I LIKE TO WRITE YET MY BODY WILL BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF ME WHEN IT DOESN’T GET WHAT IT WANTS

I ate poorly, slept horribly, and paid for it during the third week. I don’t sleep well as is, so when I started averaging three-five hours a night during the first two weeks, my body got fed up, called me an idiot, and pretty much shut things down Thanksgiving week.  Lots of attempts at “just one hour, and then I’m gonna write” naps ended up with me crashing due to pure exhaustion and not getting up until it was time to go to work the next day.  My ten hour work days left me a gibbering, lazy wreck on my extra day off, so I did not plan well, to say the least.

EVEN THOUGH I’M STATISTICALLY A LOSER, I DON’T CARE BECAUSE I WAS WRITING AND THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS, DAMN IT

In my “defeat”, I figured something out.  Nanowrimo’s not about writing fifty thousand words a month, it’s about writing and the joy we get from that act.  Besides every November, do I worry about a daily word count?  No- I worry about writing and whether I do it or not.  Nanowrimo’s a hell of a lot of fun, but the fact of the matter is, if I couldn’t write anymore, then that would be a problem…

IN THE END, IT IS WHAT IT IS

…and it was pretty damn cool.

I had a shitload of fun.

How was your month?