Unofficial Accomplishments

Anyone with even the most remote dreams of eventual publication has likely heard of NaNoWriMo. If you haven't, and are too lazy to click the link to read up on it, the basic idea is to write a novel in a month, more specifically the month of November. The official goal is a 50,000-word novel (roughly 175 pages.) It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be shared. It just has to be written between November 1 and November 30. The official prize is a little button to go on your website, and knowing that you wrote a 50,000-word novel in a month.

I've been a wannabe author almost as far back as my memory extends. Like so many wannabe authors, my biggest obstacle in becoming a nonwannabe author (also known as an author) is myself. My lack of confidence. My lack of persistence. My lack of willingness to write the reams of crud it takes to produce that shining gem. So NaNoWriMo, which not only suggests but guarantees that the story written will suck spider-infested burnt toast, would be ideal. But another obstacle I face, not only in writing but life in general, is my own cowardice. Every year I intend to sign up for it, and every year I chicken out. There's always a reason; the holidays are breathing down my neck, I have a job, I need a job, I ought to be doing this, I might be doing that. The bottom line is that I'm a coward. (I'm also a major league procrastinator and incredibly lazy, and I'm not winning any beauty contests in this space-time continuum. But I'm getting sidetracked by my own inadequacy.) Putting my name down on a list - any list - where I'd be held accountable, however remotely, for actually producing something... that would be an act of bravery. And we cowards aren't very good at bravery.

This year, though, I decided enough was enough. I have two stories stuck midstream. I haven't come close to hitting the vast majority of my resolutions. 2008 hasn't been the greatest of years on many levels. So maybe, just maybe, I could manage to write an incredibly cruddy story in 30 days, just so I could look back on the year and say I accomplished something. But... 50,000 words. That's 1666.67 words a night. (Actually, it's 1666.66 repeating to eternity, according to my calculator, but that's close enough.) It seemed a little steep. Plus there was that whole adding my name to a list thing.

As November crept ever closer, I hemmed and I hawed, until finally I found myself at the very tail end of October. I'd wasted a significant portion of time in October creating a work shirt for Halloween, and was somewhat disappointed that few people outside my family even noticed the thing. So my creative spirits were a little low going into the end of the year. I needed a shot in the arm. I needed a kick in the teeth and a whack on the head. (I needed health insurance before I got any of those things, ideally, but that's another story.)

"To heck with it," I told myself. "I'm gonna write a novel."

But... there was that whole signing-up thing, and the seemingly steep 50,000 word goal. And I didn't know how to write 0.67 words. And, like it or not, the holiday crunch was about to take a bite out of my time. Like the chicken I am, I couldn't bring myself to sign up on the official site. Again. But I set myself an alternate goal. I would write a 30,000 word novel as an unofficial participant. That was only a thousand words a night. I knew at the outset it was going to suck. I knew going into it it would be unlikely that I'd finish. But, dang it, I had to try. I had to know if I could stick to any goal I set myself.

So, the night of November 1, I picked a story idea out of the thin air within my cranium. I booted up Word. And I sat down and wrote. I didn't let myself revise, edit, or outline. I didn't let myself do character sheets. I didn't let myself even take notes on the world or the history or anything else I do to distract myself from actually writing. I just wrote. One thousand words (give or take a few) a night. It started out not so bad. It went strange. Round about the last third, it grew downright goofy, and then bizarre. If characters had unions, I'm pretty sure I'd have had a walkout on my hands before Thanksgiving. But I didn't stop. I didn't give up. I just kept writing. Every night, another thousand words, come heck or high water, pushy cats or whining relatives. Some of it was written on my tower, some on the Little Black Critter. Once again, I found myself grateful for the existence of flash drives.

Did I pull it off?

Unfortunately, I did not end up with a 30,000-word novel.

I ended up with a 36,226-word novel. It will never see the light of day. I doubt more than a fragment will ever be redeemable in any future works. But I wrote a story in 30 days, and the only person I was accountable to was myself.

Oops, wait - I miscounted. It's actually a 36,228-word novel. Those last two words are my favorites, and ones I don't let myself write nearly often enough: The End.