Making the Choice to Write

Although our events currently only run during certain months throughout the year, the NaNoWriMo community remains year-round, and the things you learn while writing a novel can be applied to many different situations. Today, participant Katherine D. Graham shares how making the decision to do NaNoWriMo influenced the rest of her life:

One Halloween night I sat in a pancake shop and a group of mysterious people in random costumes handed me an opportunity that changed my life forever: They gave me a choice.

I could leave, go home, go to bed, laugh it all off as a bad late-night decision, and never look back. Or I could stay there, surrounded by discussions of mystery, fantasy, romance, and adventures in space. I could stay there in the dream and explore the deeply buried thoughts I’d hidden in myself years before. I could stay until the night was over and then go home wondering how I could possibly live without that passion, adventure, and magic going forward.

They gave me a choice, I say, but to tell the truth the decision was made for me the second I walked into that room. These people didn’t feel like strangers, as strange as we all may be; they felt like long-lost friends finally reunited even though I hadn’t met them before. This was a group of NaNoWriMo novelists embarking together on the thirty day voyage that is November–and that night I joined the crew. I’ve never once looked back.

Before adulthood everything written was my passion; from uneven letters scribbled with crayons on construction paper in elementary school through screenplays in high-school.

Somewhere between college, marriage, a full-time job, and two side-jobs I’d lost my passion to the mundane, daily routines of “reality.” I labored away day-in and day-out even on weekends for years. Slowly, the part of me that was a creator of worlds, languages, and adventures went into a deeper and deeper hibernation. Ultimately I slipped from a full life into one of merely “existing”. That is where NaNoWriMo found me.

That first November with NaNoWriMo rocked my life. It gave me a group of people just as crazy for writing as I was. It gave me permission to carve out the hour or two every day that it takes to write fifty-thousand words in thirty days. It re-ignited my passion for writing.

“I don’t have to be the next best-seller, I just have to write.”

It also helped save me from burn-out at work. That November I learned from the WriMo vets how to balance work and time to “unplug” and focus on what I love. I learned from them and the support on the website forums that it is okay to be vulnerable to family and friends. To let them know what I care about in life. Most importantly I learned that there is no “good enough” golden standard I have to meet in my writing. My writing is my own personal adventure, and writing in and of itself is enough. I don’t have to be the next best-seller, I just have to write.

It has now been four years since that first night, since that choice. I’ve never once looked back with regret. Since 2012 I have gone on to self-publish my first novel. I’ve found a balance at work and received a promotion for job performance. And my high-school sweetheart husband and I are closer than ever. He has even started writing on his own.

Are you lost in the routine and looking for a choice that will change your life? Join us. It will change your life. Remember, your dreams cannot be made reality by anybody else. Bring them on!

Katherine D. Graham is a self-published author from Memphis, TN, USA. She is happily married to her high school sweetheart and they have two fur-babies (calico cats) and are expecting their first child. She loves reading, writing, swimming, and anything Japanese. Visit Katherine’s website, or look her up on Facebook or Twitter.

Top photo by Flickr user Sasquatch 1.