How NaNo Got Me Back in the Writing Groove!

Have you ever lost your writing momentum, only to have an idea sparked by something random that sweeps you up in a story? Today, NaNoWriMo participant Paola M. shares how she got her writing spark back after a five-year break:

The first time I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days, I was 18 years old. I had attempted to write a “novel” for almost an entire year, and as I found out, I did not have the tools or resources a writer needs to be “good.” So I subscribed to a newsletter that would send writing advice and prompts weekly or biweekly, and I was reading a lot of fanfiction whose writers would share their own personal writing advice and the resources that worked for them. I was a sponge, soaking up all of this information from the last few months of 2012 and most of 2013 to craft my characters and outline for my first ever NaNoWriMo project. 

Since I didn’t keep a journal back then, I have no way of knowing if what I’m about to say is true, but I remember that I flew through that novel. I kept an Excel document to track my word count before I updated my NaNo profile, I was naming chapters, I was meeting my word count goal every day and on some good days, even exceeding it. It was amazing!

The last time I took part in a NaNo-related challenge was in July 2015. I won Camp NaNoWriMo, having written 81,389 words of my 80,000 word count goal. I swear that if it weren’t for my account, I would not even remember having written this many words in 30 days. Then college took over my life and I didn’t have time to even think of original stories I wanted to tell. I was stressed and overworked.

By the time I was done with college I had read over 100 books and was active on the bookish corner of the internet. I was following readers and writers and watching their NaNoWriMo vlogs, green with envy because I wanted to do that. I wanted to be back in the writing groove, to feel like I could come up with things worth of people’s time and attention. But, try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a plot or a character or even a world I could have fun writing about. Then, for some strange reason, the creative bells in my head started ringing when I watched RuPaul’s Drag Race Holi-slay Spectacular on Netflix. 

With no plans of joining NaNoWriMo this year, I sat down and wrote an outline. And then, the strangest thing happened. I outlined another novel, also based on drag queens. I was excited and scared. Scared because I was so rusty from all those years of not having written a single word. But excited because this was the first time in 5 years where I finally felt like I was ready to write again.

As soon as I finished that second outline, I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo 2020 and see where it would take me. And low and behold, I won! I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days all because I let that fear go. I was no longer scared of other people reading my work, because it’s NaNoWriMo, dammit! It’s only the first draft. It’s supposed to suck. 

So let all your worries go and write! Only then will you have a manuscript to edit and revise, and hopefully get to publish one day.

Paola M. is a Mexican morenita who loves books and musical theater. She is currently an editorial intern at Entangled Publishing and a marketing assistant at Caffeine Book Tours. She runs a book club called Accidentally in Love, dedicated to reading adult romance books by marginalized authors. She is also the organizer of LHM Book Fest, a month-long event dedicated to uplifting Latinx voices in literature. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube!

Top photo by Eric Murray on Unsplash