Fair warning: Most of it has more to do with the actual NaNoing than the writing itself.
- November is the best month to write a novel.
November is a perfect month to write a novel. It's the only month I know of in which hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world are all working hard to accomplish the exact same goal in the exact same frame of time, and writers are everywhere! Online, IRL, even your relatives become writers during NaNoWriMo! It's a great time to dive into the writing community, because everyone has something to say, everyone's ears are wide open for advice, and everyone is looking to both support and be supported.
Really, November is the only month out of the year where writing becomes a truly social event, and it's glorious. - November is the worst month to write a novel.
Yeah, everyone is writing in November, but everything happens in November. There are birthdays galore pouring in from the yearly Valentines-day procreation vapors, there are deaths to mourn, Thanksgivings to plan, Black Friday sales to either murder people over or altogether avoid, plans you have to make to see family members you don't want to see (and a lot of exercises in self-control undertaken in order to not to get in any major arguments), long stretches of time where you may not have access to the internet (which, if you're using an online word processor, can be a major set-back), plans to make to talk to family members you do want to see, etc. etc. etc.
The point is, November is chock-full of Stuff To Do, and it's a real challenge to be able to fit it all in and then pound out roughly two thousand words a day on top. Like adding sprinkles, only they're made of keyboard keys and make your head hurt.
(Really, feel free to vent about all your set-back events in the comments. It can be a tough month to get through, and I know how much it helps to just complain every so often.) - Fast drafting is like cocaine
Not that I've ever used cocaine (that stuff on the table's just sugar, I promise), but I've heard some stories and I think the analogy holds up.
Trying to Fast-Draft like that makes you feel like that guy from Owl City, blending up rainbows and shooting them right through your veins (or your eyeballs, but that's heroin, I guess. So, Fast-Drafting is like... um. Don't laugh at me, it's drugs. Cocaine, Crack, Heroin, Ecstasy, the difference doesn't matter if you're a clean-as-a-whistle word junkie like me wink wonk).
You're on high, forcing yourself through fifty-thousand tiers of excitement, frustration, bliss, and exhaustion. You're screaming words into the void, doing your damnedest to make them sound pretty but not really caring as long as they're /out,/ and that feeling of progress is pretty fucking intoxicating. You want to punch dragons and piss on ogres, and when you're on a roll you feel invincible!... but when you crash, you feel like you fell into a bespiked pit of shit from which there is no exit. The more you touch that high, the more you crave it--but the longer you go without it the closer you get to being clean; once you reach that point it's easy to give up, get a nice respectable job as a shit-sweeper, and stop dreaming about that old silly notion that you could be a pen jockey.
I um. I forgot where I was going with this. I blame fast-drafting. *Snorts the sugar on the table and rides away on a horse-sized fountain pen*
I guess the point is, it's not always easy to tell what's up and what's down once you get in the zone. You're so focused on the words that nothing else seems to matter, and you want more--which makes it feel so unsatisfactory and so much like drudgery when things get hard. You really have to either push to make everything come out, or skip around to the parts that make you feel like you're flying. - There's burn-out
I finished my draft in the very extremely early morning of the twenty-ninth of November (it was like one, maybe two AM, which I still count as the twenty-eighth since I hadn't yet slept), and with 50K under my belt I was ready to see what else I could accomplish.
"Another ten thousand before November ends!" I said to myself, riding the final wave of endorphins from accomplishing my goal. "I want this monster finished by mid-December so that I have time to put it away before Edit January begins!"
December fifteenth is still my goal for finishing. My goal per day is probably going to continue to be two thousand words a day, but this blog entry is the first real piece I've been able to write since finishing Nano. "But Maggie, it's only been two days!" you say, and yes, that's very true, my treasured reader. Insanely true.
But it's more than that--I can feel this exhaustion looming in the word parts of my brain. Putting my fingers back to the keys for Captive Stars feels like an overwhelming task right now. I may need a few days to get back into it--the hope is that spending a few days away will give me plenty of time to turn my gears back to the story. I've tired of stories before, I've had periods of time when I didn't want to write, but it's been a few years since I've been in a space where the prospect of writing was mentally and physically repulsive.
The best thing I can suggest for anyone else suffering from burn-out (and I'm sure there's a lot of you; writing a novel is a task of extreme exertion, and our brains can only take so much at a time) is rest. Put on some nice music, maybe read a book or veg out on TV, take plenty of naps, and try to just let your mind recover. It did a lot this month, and it deserves a little pampering. - Other responsibilities will suffer
I'm in line to be valedictorian of my class this year. Since it's senior year, that's kind of a big deal. I've been working really hard to keep my grades up, especially important since I'm only taking three academic classes, but I was resolved this year to put NaNoWriMo first--it'll be a lot harder to put those words in once I'm in college, after all.
So the second marking period ended and, as it turns out, my grades have certainly suffered. I'm still doing great, just not ME-great. More like, classmate-great (said the perfectionist to the happy kids). It got harder to find time to study when I was trying to make time for NaNo.
It was also difficult to make time for family and friends--I know my mother was disappointed that I wasn't able to help with a lot of Christmas preparations because I was either writing or sleeping (to make brain-room for more writing).
Was it worth it? Yeah, I think so. - After all that goal-holding, it can be hard to continue the novel
Maybe it's all that burn-out, but it feels almost like a drag to keep going now that the rush is gone. I'm really going to have to find a way to keep myself motivated if I want to be able to edit in January. It's a little easier to hold yourself accountable for word count when you're competing against an outside goal and there's an ABSOLUTE deadline. At least for me. I tend to give myself too much lee-way with deadlines. - Don't go back for information
During NaNo I became very good at just writing and writing and writing--without going back to check for accuracy. It really helps you to push on through the narrative, resolving to fix it in the editing process; speed's the key and 50K is the lock! Or something like that.
Toward the end there (the last three days or so) it almost felt like momentum was the only thing keeping me going. This ties back into the above--the more momentum I gained, the higher I felt.
I wish I had more to share with you, especially after my very long, very sudden hiatus, but my brain is all tapped out. Maybe I'll have more NaNo tips after Camp NaNoWriMo (which I hope to see you all at in the summer).
Fare thee well!
