I’ve been putting off writing this, but with November fast approaching (two and a half weeks!), it can no longer be ignored.
This is a meandering, maudlin collection of memories, of what the National Novel Writing Month has meant for me.
I’m sorry to see the official organizing go. (There were definitely some missteps toward the end, and there were a couple systemic problems before that, too, but this is not a post to dissect that.) I’m really sorry to see the idea of a central site for writers to gather around go.
But I have hope, simply because other efforts have sprung up, and some of the regional communities have enough critical mass to keep going forward. (We’ll see if my home region is one of them.)
I will write about my goals for this year later. This is not that post. (Yes, I’m writing something this year.)
This is what November, and NaNoWriMo, has meant for me since 2013, my first year.
2013 was a weird year. In 2012, I’d completed my degree. (Late! I was a returning student, working on my degree around my full-time job.) I married (second time, so much optimism) and honeymooned. I had been eyeing NNWM since I’d first heard of it (via a cartoon, of all things, which I have not been able to find, in which someone got stuck then put his characters in a time loop just to hit word count (cheating! But, you know, only kinda?)), but that was the first November I had time. I’d written off and on, and had discarded, very partial drafts from many years of getting nowhere. Heck, the only real novel-length first draft I’d finished was back in high school *cough cough* years (decades, sigh) before. 80k, but it needed so much rewriting (I had to toss half the novel to fix it) that I abandoned the project because it had taken so long to get there. Multiple aborted attempts, with outlines of various quality, usually stalling out somewhere between Chapter Two and Chapter Five.
2013 was my first “just a job” year in, well, quite a few years, so it was the first year I had the attention to even try.
I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it. In fact, I wasn’t sure I would, except that I’d written one page (500-600 word) essays in my lunch hour for a couple of my recent classes. I always went to bed later than my household (my spouse’s work schedule being earlier than mine, with a matching earlier bedtime). I figured on 250-300 words at lunch, 700-800 before going to bed, and 2500/day on weekends. The way weekends fell, the math worked out to a hair more than 50k, and I decided I could do it.
I made an account on the site, and dutifully tracked my words. Even my parents visiting for Thanksgiving that year didn’t stop me, and I didn’t tell anyone I had done it until, well, I had done it. I finished with 57k words, in 27 days. More importantly, it was an outlined, but only one or two chapters drafted, novel that was so stuck in my head that I couldn’t create anything around it. (To be clear: I reworked the outline before starting, and as I went, which was a learning experience — wait, you can change your plans in the middle? WHOA! I also discarded anything I’d written before, so I was at zero words going in.)
The important part was it was readable, if quite rough, and the forums were so active and enjoyable with such energy and many suggestions that I was energized. And I promptly locked the manuscript away, and left it alone.
I did Camp NaNo spring 2014 (which launched the novel series that I’m still trying to bring to completion, and have teased a few times), successfully, and summer 2014, not so successfully. And returned to the event in November.
This time? No idea. Just a vague notion, and an intention to 100% pants (“by the seat of my pants”) to 50k. This time? I went to the kickoff, one mid-month write-in, and the TGIO party. The kickoff was at a local Denny’s. We had a dedicated room in the back, and about 20 people showed up (!!!). Loud, rambunctious, talking about what we were gonna do. Midnight hit, the first word sprint, silence in our room. My back was to the main dining area, so it wasn’t until the break that I found out the sudden silence so startled the diners, they were looking at us weirdly as soon as it fell. We collectively wondered what they thought of so many people suddenly focused on laptops and tablets. (I was on an iPad with an attached keyboard, which has been my mobile writing setup since.)
There was an IKEA write-in mid-month, which I went to, and made friends with the group I went from display to display with. Did competitive word sprints. TGIO was back at Denny’s and a lot of fun.
So I went to an in-person write-in. (I actually DIDN’T find it the first time, I didn’t look around a corner in the coffee shop, but I messaged the host on the NNWM site and managed to join the next weekend.) After doing that a few weeks, I started going to a year-round one on my way home from work. Did every Camp and November from that point on — except 2021 — ever since.
Covid, of course, interfered with the in-person in 2020 and 2021, and I remain cautious around that disease (and all the others — and do not understand why we do not all demand clean, disease-free air in our gathering places). It has kept me from the ongoing, in-person local(ish) write-in indoors at a coffee shop.
2014 was a struggle to cross the finish line. I barely made it. But I did!
2015, I outlined, and set the insane goal of 100k (I made 76k). That was also the year I first started attending every in-person write-in I could. IKEA, again. Also, a train ride write-in. 2016, I outlined more, and had one of my cooler ideas. Landed at 66,654 words, so made a 12 word sentence to round out to a nice, 66,666 to be on my profile page until the next year. (That also began the effort to land on a palindromic number each year.)
I was voluntold in either 2016 to host the train ride, because the original host had moved away. That was a fairly large write-in, and stressful to organize, but I did it. Kept it up through 2019, and was going to hand over the reins in 2020, but… virtual. (Instead, in 2020 and 2021, I found a train simulator and did an online version on a similar route. Lots in 2020 for the novelty, minimal attendance in the years since.)
In 2017, I started hosting smaller write-ins, too, and kept that up. Even as we shifted online to discord, I continue to run word sprints weekday mornings (and the occasional evening), to prod a few people along.
2017 also marked the year I started trying to break 100k again, this time with a big enough story and a better outline, and I succeeded. I have done so four times total (2017, 2018, 2023, 2024).
What did I get out of it?
The first year, I unblocked myself. I also learned that fast drafting is not necessarily bad drafting, which knocked me out of the agonizing over every sentence paralysis. And it taught me that if I did get to the end of a draft, and I had to toss half of it, it wasn’t six months to create a different half, it was a couple weeks.
The second year, I realized I needed some structure.
Subsequent years, I learned about planning, about what sort of outline I need. (Short form: an outline is what you need to give you the guideposts to get through the story you want to tell. It’s very writer-specific, in my opinion. Also, different stories need different information to draft, and possibly a totally different outline to do revision with.) I did a lot of experimenting. I tried a couple different genres, and multiple approaches.
But the really important thing I got was a community and support and new friends I could talk about writing with.
For that reason, it leaves a big hole in my heart to see it collapse, to see that this year, there’s no cute video from HQ after you pass the finish line. No fun forums to hang out on. (Though, honestly, the forums lost a LOT when they moved off their custom phbbb to discourse.) No palpable building energy.
Sure, I have a different tracker (I’m using the one at writingmonth.org, which popped up on Mastodon last year, and I used in parallel to the official one). So, you know, that part’s covered. My region still has a discord, though it’s quieter than it used to be. Preptober’s been pretty quiet so far.
But I think the event will survive the collapse. Too many writers found it too useful for too long to go away.
I miss the central organizing location. Maybe one of the offshoots will build up into a new one. Maybe not.
I miss what was. But what was had already faded, in some ways.
I’m still writing this year, though.
Good luck to everyone else who will attempt it in November. May the ideas spring forth and the words flow!
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