Erin Lodes

I am a proud supporter, participator, “loser,” and winner of NaNoWriMo. I’ve been doing it for seven years now, with a few wins, a few “losses” (I use quotation marks because I believe just the attempt is a win because hey I tried and I got some words down and getting any words down is a success), and one year wisely taken off because everything else going on in my life was absolutely insane.

I love NaNoWriMo.

It taught me how to write without letting my perfectionist editor get the better of me. It taught me how writing like that, without letting yourself edit, can result in some of the most magical insights and breakthroughs. It taught me that yes, I can bang out 50k in a month while going to school full time and working part time and still trying to have some semblance of a life.

It also taught me that sometimes you won’t always reach your writing goals. Because life can get in the way, because sometimes book ideas don’t work out, because sometimes the demons in your head are screaming too loud and drowning out anything else and you can’t find a single word you think is worthy to put on the page. And it taught me that’s okay, because even though you “failed,” you learned something. You learned how to push through everything to get a few words down. You learned that sometimes it’s okay to give yourself a break. You learned you can always try again tomorrow, or next month, or next November.

I love NaNoWriMo.

But as October draws to a close, I am not madly trying to get character sketches down. I am not throwing pieces of paper into a hat to choose between the four ideas I was debating for NaNo at the beginning of October.

And I am not doing those things because this year, I’m sitting NaNoWriMo out.

And it’s not because I’m so crazy busy that I know I’ll kill myself trying to reach that 50k. It’s not because I don’t have supportive friends and family who will understand when I tell them I can’t leave my office because I’m 2k behind and that shit adds up fast. It’s not because the demons in my head are so loud I couldn’t possibly win that battle every day to climb that 50k mountain. (They’ve actually been behaving almost kind of a little bit well lately but don’t let them hear you or it’ll all go to hell.)

I have a confession to make. The reason I’m not doing NaNo this year is because I’ve climbed that mountain already. I’ve reached that summit — several times in fact. I’ve spewed out 50k words in 30 days and some of those words have even been good.

What I haven’t done — and here is the confession part kids — is finish a book.

Don’t get me wrong, I had what I thought was a completed novel once — like I was so innocent I even sent it out to a few agents. Then I gave it to an editor friend and she ripped it all to pieces. And she was absolutely right. That book wasn’t done. That book still isn’t done.

So this November, I still have a goal. And it is to finish the book I’m currently working on. Finish this draft, and when I say finish this draft, I mean finish it to the point where no scenes are missing, the character arcs aren’t missing chunks, and the story line doesn’t have gaping holes readers will fall through to get lost in the murky water below.

This November, I won’t be doing NaNoWriMo. It took me a long time to be okay with saying that sentence because NaNo has been such an important part of my writing life for so many years. But it’s okay. Here, I’ll say it again. This November, I won’t be doing NaNoWriMo.

This November I will finish a book.

Anyway, that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?