NaNoWriMo was a bust.
I wanted to do this with all my heart, but in the end I just didn't have the support I needed to complete the challenge. It's like a marathon. You can train. You can prepare. You can show up to run, but if when you get to the race, and while you're running, people distract you, ask you to stop, and tell you it's not that important, you'll never finish the race.
It started out bad for me. The first weekend I was supposed to start writing, I was asked to stop and do menial work around the house. I had talked about this competition from the moment I heard about it. I let everyone know how much it meant to me. I warned them that my time was going to be consumed for the month of November, and asked them to allow me some space so that I could write. The exact opposite happened. Every time I sat down to write, something "more important" came up, and I was asked to stop what I was doing to attend to it.
At first, I pushed through to spite everyone. I thought to myself, "I don't need any help or support. I'm going to finish this for me, to prove I can do it." I got about half-way through and finally got discouraged enough to give up. I know I should have rallied if it really meant enough to me, but I just felt like it didn't matter, anymore.
Today, I read Stephen King's top 20 rules for writing. I'll post them tomorrow for Thursday Truths. Anyway, I realized that I failed because I failed. Nobody else made me fail. The tough circumstances I faced while attempting this challenge didn't defeat me. I defeated me. Writing is supposed to be my passion. I love doing it. It calms me. I stressed so much over the rules of the competition that I let it distract me from why I write.
From now on, I'm not writing outside my genre. I tried a Historical Fiction for NaNoWriMo. It was a mistake. I don't even like to read Historical Fiction. It was interesting studying the history, but it was to constrictive for my writing style. I like to create fantastical worlds. I like to alter reality. The premise for my NaNo project was a satirical parallel of our current president's life and all of the conspiracy theories surrounding his background and agenda. I changed the politics so that my character actually had an agenda, and the subtitle of the book was going to be "a democrat's satire, a republican's nightmare". I didn't really want to take sides, just point out the extremists on each side. The more I got into the project, though, the more I lost interest in it. I need to stay true to myself.
I may be able to write Sci-fi because it's my second favorite genre, but Fantasy is my all-time favorite; even the old-school cheesy stuff. I love the creativity that goes in to creating those worlds beyond our own. It may make me a "dork" or "nerd", but it's who I am, and I'm going to try to stay truer to that part of me from here on out.
From now on, I'm not writing outside my genre. I tried a Historical Fiction for NaNoWriMo. It was a mistake. I don't even like to read Historical Fiction. It was interesting studying the history, but it was to constrictive for my writing style. I like to create fantastical worlds. I like to alter reality. The premise for my NaNo project was a satirical parallel of our current president's life and all of the conspiracy theories surrounding his background and agenda. I changed the politics so that my character actually had an agenda, and the subtitle of the book was going to be "a democrat's satire, a republican's nightmare". I didn't really want to take sides, just point out the extremists on each side. The more I got into the project, though, the more I lost interest in it. I need to stay true to myself.
I may be able to write Sci-fi because it's my second favorite genre, but Fantasy is my all-time favorite; even the old-school cheesy stuff. I love the creativity that goes in to creating those worlds beyond our own. It may make me a "dork" or "nerd", but it's who I am, and I'm going to try to stay truer to that part of me from here on out.
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