I think I figured out why I’m so nervous about NaNoWriMo. Beyond, of course, the fact that it’s another 50k words on top of the 50k that I already write at my job for Actual Money. (Hellooooooo one million cups of coffee.)
No, my nerves are most likely based in the fact that I am slow at writing. That’s the way I work. It took me five years to write my most recently completed novel. I had a bunch of time to sit, and think, and think some more, and scrap stuff, and think some more. When I got stuck, sometimes I wouldn’t come back for another month or two. Once I decided to finish it for my thesis, I started getting “serious” about it (I put the quotes because of course I was serious before, but now, with only 20k words to my name, I had to be diligent), but it still took nearly two years to push out the next 60k words.
NaNo is not built for people like me. The most I’ve ever written in one day for my personal writing was only just over 2,000 words.
Or maybe, on the contrary, it is built for people like me. To push ourselves, see what we can accomplish. To prove to ourselves and everyone else that, yes, we are normally pokeymcpokersons about this whole writing thing, but when we set our minds to it, we can do it.
Now, with my content marketing job, I routinely write nearly 3,000 words per day — and NaNo is going to add at least 1,000 to that already egregious total. (I’m not planning on “winning” — because that would be stupid.) This will be huge for me. It will be difficult, and exhausting. Not to mention I’m going to be doing some traveling next month, too, so there will be a couple days I won’t be able to get anything done. Which will be annoying. (But I’m excited to go home to visit my parents and friends!)
But somehow, I’m going to knock out a chunk of at least the first section of this novel. Because I feel good about it. And because if I make it through this month having written more than zero words of personal fiction, it will be more than most of the previous months. So that will be a win in itself.
I have coffee, and a somewhat comfortable office space (more on that later). I will have booze. I will have kitty cuddles. I am ready to do this thing. The nerves, hopefully, will just help me focus.
Seven days to go.
Liz Makes Stuff 