The NaNoWriMo Complication

Here’s the deal: NaNoWriMo is meant to be a motivational program for writers who want to write a novel to sit down with a specific word count goal to reach in thirty days, and the accountability of reaching those word goals by putting them into a word-count tracker online. The basic word count goal is 50,000 words in thirty days, which comes out to about 1,667 words per day.

My novel manuscript was already 50,000ish words before NaNoWriMo started, so I wasn’t really planning on adding another 50,000 to it. However, I’m currently on chapter 14 of 21, and I’ve added almost 11,000 new words to the manuscript. And since this week is only a 3-day work week, I imagine I will probably get another 10,000ish added to it before the week is over. More than a specific word count, though, my goal for NaNoWriMo is to complete the fourth draft of this manuscript so I can send it out to my beta readers and get some feedback on what still needs revision.

I have to say, as rough as parts of this manuscript still are, I am thoroughly in love with this manuscript. I’ve never had that with a full-length work of my own fiction before. It’s one thing to see the potential in a manuscript, and it’s something else entirely to see that potential starting to come out and manifest onto the page. And the more I add to this book, the more I see glimpses into the rest of the trilogy. I have the bulk of the sequel already outlined, which is extremely exciting, and I know who the primary antagonist is in this trilogy. If I can keep to my general writing schedule, books one and two of this trilogy will be written, revised, edited, and published before this time next year.

Once I’ve completed my second masters, I can only imagine how much more time and energy I’ll have for writing. My goal is still to write and publish two books each year. If I can fit more into that time frame, so much the better, but I’d rather produce quality work than just crank out drafts that are mediocre. It’s astonishing to me how prolific writers can be in this kind of intense, creative frame of mind all the time. It’s just…exhausting at times, and even when I’m enjoying the process and I’m churning out thousands of words at a time, can also be frustrating and annoying and fun simultaneously.

But I am grateful for the existence of NaNoWriMo to keep me somewhat ordered and focused on the creative projects at hand. I know that I will, at some point, take time away from fiction to really dig into my second book of poetry. Maybe that will be when I’ve completed this trilogy? At any rate, it feels good to keep the writing going. Whether I sell any copies or not, whether I make any money or not, this is exactly what I was and am meant to do with my life, and I’m doing it. Actively. Devotedly.

It is complicated and even difficult at times, but it is also necessary and part of my process.