New beginnings before the new year.

Hey folks! December is here and you know what that means? November is over and I’m done with NaNoWriMo, the month-long writing extravaganza that drives writers across the globe to write 50,000 words a month (1667 words a day)! Yay!

You may have noticed I took a little hiatus from my blog, but that wasn’t for lack of thinking about it. All month, I was gearing up for this fresh post-NaNo post. I was gonna tell you about how amazing writing like a madperson is and how it changed my life and how I was gonna edit the hell out of my story and have it published by 2019.

Yeah, that’s dead.

NaNoWriMo, for me, was like college. It was hard as hell but I gave it my all. I learned a few things, most of which I’ve already forgotten. Midway through I wanted to quit, so instead, I overachieved as much as I could and finished early. And after successfully completing three years of it, I’m not sure if this is something I’ll ever want to do again.

I’m a bit jealous of my friend – oh my partner who bestowed me with a magic pen and pad and the extra push I needed to commit this year. She, too, conquered NaNoWriMo and found something amazing. She learned that with a regular push, she could make writing a priority in her life. And she wants to keep going! I pray that she does because she’s the type to have a dope ass book that’s beautifully written but so random everybody talks about it and it turns into an overnight bestseller.

Me? I’d be okay with my book being published posthumously. They say there’s a bit of the writer in every story. Well, there’s a whole boatload of me in there, and I’m not in a rush to share it with the world. The story was more for me than for anyone else. And as my novel gathers dust, I will happily resume my normal writing habits.

Don’t get me wrong. If you have always talked about writing something big, but never gave it a real shot, NaNo is perfect for you! You must do it! I’m proud of what I accomplished because that mess was friggin hard. I got up an hour early every day (4:30 am on workdays) to write. I wanted to quit almost every day and I didn’t always know where my plot was going or what I wanted to say, but somehow I kept writing every day until it was done. I love that I proved I can accomplish whatever I put my mind to.

But for me, at least the third time around, my life was unchanged. I didn’t magically become Stephen King with a feverish desire to write each and every day. My creative juices are not an overflowing stream of magical inspiration and I am no longer married to my story. In fact, I may never read it again. The moment I got my certificate, all I could think about was doing anything but writing.

I cracked open a paperback and devoured it in one evening. In the last days of November, after my 50,000 words were written, I slept in later than I slept in for months. I started reading fanfiction and watching anime again. I started craving social contact and texting my friends about nonsense, dinner, and travel.

If I learned anything, I learned that there’s a lot more I want to experience than just the inside of my own head. I want to see what else is out there in the world. I want to go to plays and cook vegan meals and stare at the wall sometimes. I want to see a rainforest or the Northern Lights. I want to read all the other stories I didn’t think of and forget myself for a while.

So, my life-changing novel writing marathon wasn’t as life-changing as I hoped it would be. But at least it counts as something dope. And now I’m back. B)