My Issue with NaNoWriMo

This year I attempted NaNoWriMo yet again. And, for yet another year, I failed NaNo’s 50K goal. I don’t count my 30K achieved as a NaNo failure, really, but I did feel like I was letting myself down.

In ways, I love NaNo. NaNo makes writing accessible to people approaching writing for the first time. With a sense of community providing encouragement and a plethora of resources at one’s disposal, NaNo should be the ideal environment for success. “Don’t worry if it’s crap,” says some. “Don’t worry if you aren’t sure where you are going. No plot? No problem, just like Chris Baty says!”

But I have problems with NaNo.

As much as I love the community, I am competitive in nature. This isn’t healthy, I know. I am happy for people who succeed but if I don’t match or equal, let alone win, I beat myself up for it. This year, I had a ton of ambitious friends who set to rule NaNo–and they did. In record time. Most finished NaNo before November 15th, the halfway point. And me, starting my NaNo effort with a vacation and a writing conference, simply couldn’t keep up from the early stages.

When facing NaNo, I decided to work on a rewrite of a book I really, really want to have traditionally published. As a result, the book not only needed to be typed quickly to meet NaNo timeline standards, I also had to maintain a level of quality that I would be satisfied with. Now, I’m sure you have all picked up on this given this site is called Anxiety Ink, but I am very hard on myself. When typing, I use the backspace button–a lot. I’m not looking to fill up my pages with weak verbs and “That’ll do” metaphors, expanded contractions and redundant descriptions–issues that happen so frequently when working on a NaNo draft.

But when I approach the idea of NaNo, I love it. I want to keep up. I want to prove myself worthy of it. Yes, I have succeeded with Camp NaNo, the off-month version of NaNo. But traditional NaNo? No. And I’ve always wanted to succeed. But as I struggle and fall behind, I become more and more frustrated. As my friends who I love to support surpass me, I feel like a failure. It’s a complicated mental defeated block I have, I get that. But as I try harder and harder to meet NaNo, dropping more and more commitments and, you know, chores, I feel worse and worse about myself not making it, not succeeding.

I realized I was attaching far too much of my self-worth to NaNoWriMo, an arbitrary number and community commitment that doesn’t match who I am and what I am trying to succeed with. The moment I realized it, I backed off. I took the time to read a book–something I had been putting off. I took the time to watch a movie–something else I had been putting off. I took the time to relax, enjoy, and balance creative existance. And I am very pleased I was able to wake up and step back.

Does this mean I will never participate in NaNoWriMo ever again? Who knows. I can’t really say. But one thing I can say for sure is that I will be more cognizant when taking part about what *I* want from it, not just the word count it needs from me.

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