Scroll through my projects page on the NaNoWriMo website, and you will find a NaNo Challenge graveyard. Heck, scroll through this blog and find GREAT NANOWRIMO DESPAIR!
My first NaNoWriMo voyages were fun and productive! In fact, I found the challenge rather easy. Even juggling high school and college, I made it all the way or super close to 50,000. I think things went wrong when I skipped a year and then graduated college.
My last NaNoWriMo win was November 2015, and since then I signed on for 11 challenges that I did not manage to complete.
Now, the community of writers who champion NaNoWriMo will be quick to point out that it’s not just about getting to the winner screen. It’s about a whole community coming together to cheer each other on, and every word regardless of whether or not it takes you over that finish line is a victory.
But I gotta say…
This sure feels good.
Winning Isn’t Everything, But I’m Celebrating My Victories
I burst out of the gate on November 1st and for about 14k words, I was on fire. Four steps ahead of the progress line and loving every word.
I lost momentum at the start of week two and came to a standstill about week 3.
Sunday the 27th, sloughing my way to 33k, I almost resigned myself to a 12th challenge lost in my depressing streak.
Monday morning, I woke up and said, “Hey, wait a minute!”
It was a tall order for myself, 17k words in three days, but…
I knew I could do it.
So, I did. Wrote like madness for two evenings, getting about 8k words each day before claiming a win on lunch break of the final NaNoWriMo day.
All in all, if my timers are correct, it was about 40 hours of work at an average typing speed of 1,250 words per hour.
No, my fingers do not hurt and no keyboards were harmed in the making of this happy winning month.
I Wrote a Novel, Now What?
People familiar with my writing journey will know that I have actually sat here with sloppy first-draft in hand many times.
Counting the darlings on my hard-drive, this makes manuscript full draft number 16 actually…
My dream for my NaNoWriMo 2022 project (PSYCHOSURGE!) would be for it to be traditionally published by a major press. But for the moment, I’m going to shelve it.
I have a novel project that I wrote (independent of NaNoWriMo) in 2018 called HANG ON. That project is still something I consider my best work, and I still dream of getting it traditionally published. My goal for December and for 2023 is to get it into submission-shape.
I’ve made a submission-ready HANG ON my year’s goal in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 now. Some people might call that a depressing failure streak.
But… I’ve proven to myself that I can break one of those.
So cheers to the end of bad patterns and the liberation from old habits!
Read my serial sci-fi story The Control only on Mythrill!
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Until next time, my glorious herd! Imagine, dream, and believe.
🦄 ❤️AllytheUnicorn❤️ 🦄
[…] Meets Fiction Contest. My why-not pitch to Mythrill got The Control published on their platform. I finished NaNoWriMo after an 11-challenge losing streak in 2022. I’ve cut out and saved fun comments from my […]