NaNoWriMo taught me a great deal this year.
I shared this fascinating experience with a group of
wonderful writers, many of whom contribute to this awesome blog. We would post
daily our accomplishments, struggles, frustrations, and/or tears. NaNoWriMo is
not a task to be undertaken lightly. In fact, I’d sat on the sidelines for
several years, watching other braver souls set forth on the perilous journey of
writing 50,000 words in one month. I’d pants around with them in spirit, adding
a few words here a sentence or two there to my work in progress, but I did it
comfortably from my uncommitted couch. This year, I jumped in with both feet,
all the while kicking and screaming, and discovered a great deal about myself
and the writing process in general.
The biggest gem of insight this insane challenge gleaned
was that as writers, and human beings in general, we are ridiculously hard on
ourselves. In order to reach 50,000 words in 30 days, one had to commit to
setting down on the page 1,667 words daily. That, by the way, is my extent at
math skills, which is why I stick with writing.
At the end of each day we would post our word counts.
Some would wallow in defeat and self-torture, others would prance with victory.
On days I didn’t make the word count, I felt like I had failed. Days I made the
minimum or exceeded it I was ecstatic but felt guilty posting my success
because I knew there were others in the group beating themselves up for not
meeting the daily requirements. I knew how frustrating that felt. NaNoWriMo was supposed to be a brilliant kick
start to creativity, instead it turned into a mad dash to crunch the numbers, and
each day I fell behind left me with a bitter taste of inadequacy and failure.
Why? Because the expectation with NaNoWriMo is that you commit to achieving the
goal. In order to win, in order to get that shiny NaNoWriMo badge you can
proudly display as your profile picture, you had to make the cut.
But here’s the thing. Make the cut for what? We were
battling with ourselves and our uniquely creative process (for more insight, check out Anna Davis's post Want More Creative Energy? Pace Yourself). NaNoWriMo forces us to create in a surreal,
unnatural environment and then measure ourselves against that ideal.
NaNoWriMo is not bad, in and of itself, the problem is
how we approach it. Setting goals is a wonderful pursuit, but expecting things
to turn out a specific way only sets us up for disappointment and
disillusionment if things turn sour. Instead of patting ourselves on the back
for 500 words in one day, for many participants (myself included) negative
self-talk undermined the process of creating and turned writing into something
unpleasant, or at very least a chore, and a tough one at that.
We write because we love to, because our passion
compels us to create worlds, people them with a host of quirky characters, and
live out our fanciful days in a realm of make believe so captivating that we
lose ourselves in our own delightful creations. When we get caught up in the
semantics of process and output rather than the experience of joyfully,
blissfully adding fresh, compelling, sexy words to the page, in my humble opinion,
it defeats the purpose: why we got into this crazy gig to begin with.
As writers, there are a plethora of misguided expectations
we may place on ourselves. We might have an unrealistic idea of how long it
actually takes to write a novel, screen play, instructional manual, or memoir
(months, years, even decades). We might not realize how many drafts it takes to
turn a lumpy piece of creative clay into a smooth and polished masterpiece
(think double digits here). What about the end result of your blood, sweat, and
tears? Do you want to be published? Are you hinging your happiness and sense of
accomplishment on whether or not you get picked up by an agent or publishing
house? What happens if you don’t sign that contract? Do you throw in the towel,
hang up your laptop, and call it a career? Or do you acknowledge that there are
other streams, other opportunities to get your work out there? Are you open to
new experiences, wild and crazy unconventional options?
If we are constantly hung up on the end result,
whether we get there, and the way we envision ourselves arriving (standing on a
podium with fireworks and streamer cannons, thank you very much) we’ve lost
touch with the passion that drives us to create.
By all means, set goals, have objectives, but don’t
hinge your happiness on whether they end up looking like the vision you created
in your mind. Instead, go with the flow, take the lessons you learn in the
process and attempt something new in the future, try a new tack. No effort is
wasted.
Being a writer isn’t easy. There are plenty of
challenges both external and internal that we continually battle against, but the
journey is definitely worth it if we keep in mind our reasons for starting in
the first place. Writing invigorates us. It makes us excited to wake up in the
morning, our fingers itch to put those words on the page, to flesh out that
story, to sculpt and hone that brilliant idea.
If writing’s your passion live it, breathe it, but let
go of the handlebars, loosen the grip, lose the expectations and let the words
percolate one letter at a time.
You’re a writer. Have fun with it. xo
In gratitude,
Marissa