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Posts Tagged ‘NaNoWriMo’

It’s the end of November so every web geek in the world is putting the finishing touches on her novel. But not I.

Ever since I heard about National Novel Writing Month years ago I’ve wanted to participate. Mere weeks ago I thought, “THIS is the year!”, but alas . . . before November 1st even materialized I realized it wasn’t a good time to devote myself to another time-consuming and unprofitable project.

I’ve tried a bunch of things — structured things — to force myself to write more by building it into my schedule on a regular basis or writing short things for my members (which I generally post the first parts of then never finish, -or- DO have an ending, but really are only first drafts and not what members want to read in the first place) or by telling people I’m going to write this or that, and none of them have worked so I had to acknowledge to myself after I made my little NaNoWriMo profile and post here proclaiming my intentions that I totally couldn’t justify doing it and didn’t even WANT to.

I do want to write for fun/for myself/to escape into my head more with a partial written record to remember where I’ve been, and to at least pretend I want to become more skilled and produce pieces of writing that will make me happy and satisfy my cravings, but (but what? I don’t want to squeeze it in? I don’t want it to be a chore? I want it to be EVERYTHING for a week or a month, not an added obligation where I have to check in with someone else to approve of its length or its sex appeal or its marketability?) NaNoWriMo was NOT the best way for me to do it this year.

I just couldn’t justify the NaNoWriMo adventure when I haven’t been responding to email, have stacks of unfinished to-do lists, and, most embarrassing of all, haven’t even finished filling in my picture pages here on my blog redesign or added all my friends’ links or fixed the multitudes of minor yet painfully broken posts and features (categories vs. tags that got messed up in transition), hadn’t written and sent out a newsletter to fans in months (if not a year or more), etc.

On the other hand, I’m not always sure I can justify ANYTHING that I’m doing. Yes, that’s a maudlin exaggeration, but one I couldn’t resist. Also, wrote a bunch more bullshit related to this but removed it. Some people can relate, but others would be like, OH GOD SHUT *UP* ALREADY! or wouldn’t be able to resist giving me advice which would make me vomit and lose hair.