NaNoWriMo, Day 26 - An Announcement

I'm into the final 7k of what may be my final NaNoWriMo event. At least for a while.

It's been a solid run. I've written twenty novels out of this contest since 2008. Only a few of them are really beyond redemption (or at least would take more work than I'm willing to put in). Kyrie (2014) is obviously my favourite, but there are definitely others I will be revisiting when Kyrie is closer to true completion.

This farewell to NaNoWriMo would not be complete without a huge nod to Chris Baty, the founder, and his book No Plot? No Problem! which I borrowed from the library at age 14 -- not knowing it would change my life forever.

Chris Baty made writing accessible for those of us with ADHD. He made writing seem like madcap fun, not a tedious chore. He made it exciting. He gave it a deadline (and you know how great deadlines are for ADHDers). He made it a social activity.

Chris Baty revolutionised what writing was. He unlocked the gate of writing so the ADHDers, with all our whimsy and colour and verve, could have a seat at the table too. He gave writing ADHDers a voice. And I am so grateful for that. Without that zany book, and without that deadline, I would never have written anything. I would still be spinning my wheels, wondering what could have been if I had only managed to try writing just once.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not quitting writing altogether. I intend to rewrite Kyrie again starting in 2024. As mentioned above, there are other drafts lined up for once Kyrie is 'done.' I am so excited to actually work towards publication for some of these stories. I still intend to write blog posts and maybe the odd short story.

Maybe in a few years I'll revisit the possibility of NaNoWriMo. But I'll be taking an indefinite, likely multi-year, hiatus. Up till now, the only years I sat out were 2017 and 2020. But my job, my marriage, and my mental health have all suffered during the past few Novembers and I have decided it's time to recharge. The annual hit to my marriage especially is just not worth it.

Is it sad? Definitely. I loved this event and the madcap fun it brought into my life. I loved writing alongside M and then writing to keep her memory alive. But as much as I love M and will never forget her, 'keeping her memory alive' can't be the only reason to subject my marriage to this substantial strain every year. I have other art pieces dedicated to her that accomplish the same thing. And NaNoWriMo just isn't the same without her actually in it. Every year since her death has been a huge struggle, and I think at this point, five years later, I have to accept that NaNoWriMo will never again be the same amount of fun. Time does not heal all wounds. Not completely.

For the time being, I think I have gotten what I need to get out of this event. Maybe one day I'll return. Maybe I never will.

But for now, I will try to savour these last 7k as much as I can.

NaNoWriMo, Day 18

I am struggling HARD this year.

I'm exactly at par right now. I'm getting hundreds -- not thousands -- of words done on work days, and have written maybe five words today -- my day off. I had hoped to write 3k today, but I just don't have the mental energy.

I keep going back to LinkedIn, looking for jobs, looking for connections, looking for anything that will get me out of this hellhole job that I'm currently trapped in. This is quite literally eating my life. My marriage is failing and I am almost convinced it's work stress that's making me an ineffective marriage partner.

On top of that, somebody tipped off the NaNoWriMo Board about the moderation drama that's been going on all year THIS month, of all months, and got all the forums shut down for all users during the LITERAL ANNUAL EVENT THAT THE FORUMS ARE THERE FOR. I've never been a huge forum presence, but I have a couple threads that I'm active in and not having the forums there for support and encouragement has almost killed my writerly will to live. I understand why they did it, I do. Moderation is, apparently, a dumpster fire (I have not witnessed any of this, but I've been hearing others complain about it all year) so in order to 'suspend' mod activities and sort out the allegations, they had to also suspend the forums lest it become the Wild West. But in an already-difficult time in my life where I am feeling extremely unsupported and unheard both personally and professionally, this is the straw that has broken this camel's back. Even if everything is sorted out, I really don't know if I will do NaNoWriMo next year. I understand the Board is doing their best and I do appreciate their efforts to sort it out and make it right as best they can but I'm just done having all my support systems taken away from me and this has left a really bad taste in my mouth. NaNoWriMo made me a writer and for that I will always be grateful. I have nothing bad to say about the event. But I don't know if I have the strength to put myself through this again, and that breaks my heart. I loved this place. But I feel it didn't love us back.

I'm so tired. I've had a headache for *checks notes* eighteen days now.

Even my story feels dead. I guess it matches my soul right now. I loved the concept of it, but I'm struggling with execution, as I did with last year's story. Both years I've had amazing ideas that I really loved, but was completely bored of the story as I wrote it. I don't remember feeling this before with any of the previous eighteen NaNo-related works I've written.

Is it a sign that I need to pause writing rough drafts and focus on editing these into actual published works? Maybe. I have easily five drafts that are very workable candidates for eventual publication. But I do want to finish this one. Only 20k left to go. It's still very doable, but only if work and marriage stress don't drown me first.

I hate that this is the NaNoWriMo experience I'm having. Even before the forum shutdown, I was struggling mightily. I'm so tired. I'm so done. Even with an outline, I can't seem to get from point A to point B. I honestly wonder if I would have been better off not making an outline at all. It's not stifling me, per se... I think the outline itself is just not interesting enough to me at the moment, especially with everything else draining me of hope. Writing used to be a welcome escape for me, but it's not working anymore. And that hurts a lot.

NaNoWriMo, Day 12

I have never been so prepared for NaNoWriMo.

I actually outlined this year. I used to mentally lock up at the mere mention of an outline, but the fact that I finished a full rewrite of Kyrie in large part due to an outline has made me rethink my process a little bit.

Mind you, I haven't done a full outline. I only plotted about three-quarters of the way, and I'm okay with that. I don't want to know where exactly this is going to end up, but since I have so little writing time nowadays, I'm finding I need to have a clear idea of what's coming next every day so I'm not just wasting hours filibustering. Don't get me wrong, I liked the filibustering -- that's part of the fun -- but between the full-time job, hunting for a job that will pay me a living wage/not demonize me for being injured and in severe pain, trying to keep ahead of my husband's multiple health issues, and trying to not ruin our marriage by being so burnt out by work, I simply do not have time to filibuster now. (That's also why I don't post here as much. I want to, but I'm so burnt out by work that half the time I come home and literally stare at the wall for hours, trying to even begin to recover.)

Day 1 started out surprisingly well. I managed to rack up 2,252 words, the overwhelming majority of them on Lila, my Neo (the second iteration) while waiting for supper to cook.

Day 2 started rough (overslept and also spent almost 45 minutes on hold with Amazon customer service because they screwed up my order), but managed to make up the word count in the evening.

Day 3 was the first time (of many) I struggled to make the word count. There's definitely a logistical flaw in my story, and I'm still partly in revision mode from the Kyrie rewrite so it was hard to me to let it go and continue the story without solving the problem.

However, I did rediscover Margaret Becker's music and have been playing the heck out of it. Every song is a straight up banger and I feel like I can conquer the universe after listening to this stuff. How have I not fangirled over her work before? Now I understand why my mother had her music on repeat all the time when I was a kid.

Week 2 was basically a write-off (not in a good way). More marital problems (it seems these always crop up whenever I'm trying to do something creative), and work problems conspired to make this week one of the worst NaNoWriMo weeks I have EVER experienced. I say this as a fourteen-year veteran of the sport with nearly 20 NaNoWriMo-born rough drafts in my folders. There were several days that I didn't even make 1,000 words, and I don't think I have EVER done that during NaNoWriMo before.

After one of the worst writing weeks in my entire writing life, I decided that since the work problems are likely to continue (they are mostly management related and not likely to improve anytime soon) and marital problems happen at the most inopportune times, I would build up a massive lead this weekend. 

It's going well so far. Day 11 (yesterday), I racked up 4,187 words, bringing the novel's total to 22,006. So far today I've gotten to 25,128 words and might poke at it a bit more tonight. I do have tomorrow off as well, but we've got some errands to run so the numbers may not be as big. But I want to get as close to 30k as possible before I go back to work on Tuesday.

I'm not feeling the story yet, but I've had a couple of small bursts of inspiration and the outline has definitely helped a lot. I've had to remind myself that exposition is okay right now (there was a metric ton of exposition in Kyrie, and I've spent the better part of two years trying to convert those long swaths of many-weeks-compressed-into-two-paragraphs into actual scenes with motives and tensions and resolutions and foreshadowing -- but all of that takes days, if not weeks, at a time).

Lila has been indispensable this year. I'm pretty sure this is the most I've worked with Lila since before I went to college. Even at home, I've been using her to write, and of course she comes to work for writing on my break (I usually manage about 300 words or so on break, which is 300 words less that I have to write after work when I'm so angry and frustrated at my job that I'm literally crying).

TL;DR: Still not fully 'into' my story, work sucks and is profoundly affecting my writing (more than college ever did), but I'm spending this weekend building a word count cushion, Lila is awesome, and I love Margaret Becker.