5 Things my first NaNoWriMo has taught me

I’m so glad it’s over.  I can’t believe I said that.  I was so excited and pumped for this on October 31st.  I can’t believe I committed to it and saw it through.  Well, sorta.  I did not reach the glorious 50,000 words goal, for which I am disappointed in myself.

But my philosophy is “if you can’t find the silver lining, draw one in”.  So, in the spirit of looking for the triumphs, I can say that NaNo taught me a few things about myself and I’d like to share them with you:

1. Some stories are better left unwritten – I’ve had this story in my head since I moved out of the secured housing apartment building I lived in after I left my first husband 22 years ago.  He was a really abusive jerk, thus the “ex”.  Yes, it was semi-autobiographical.  The pushing down the stairs and being pulled back to the apartment by the hair?  Yeah, that was real.  I thought I had worked through all the shit that goes with being a victim of domestic abuse and violence.  I was writing to tell the stories of all the women in that safe house.  Ultimately, my main character would have been shot dead by her husband.  As I wrote, I relived.  I stopped writing.
2. I’m actually a terrible writer! – When I reread what I wrote it was terrible!  I’m so sorry to have put you through that if you read it.  Ugh.  So juvenile.  So many voices of the narrator.  Hopefully, I will get better.  And I will keep trying – getting published is still a dream!
3. I’m not as committed to writing as I thought! – The first 10 days were bangers.  I got almost 18,000 words written in the first 10 days and that was taking 2 days off entirely.  When I stopped writing because it was too painful, I just stopped.  I didn’t start something new (and believe me, I have lots of ideas).  When it wasn’t easy – I gave up! (I’ve never done that before??!!!!)
4. I should have dreamed of being an editor instead – Seriously.  I just couldn’t stop going back to edit.  I couldn’t let it “flow”…maybe that’s why it sucked so bad?  Hmm.
5. Over-Commitment = Guaranteed Failure – Particularly since this was my first NaNo, I should never have also tried to to NaBlo!  Dumb, da dumb, dumb!  Of course I can’t do it all!!  I have a life, lol.  It has to take priority and I should have know that given the crap we have going on, this was a bad idea.

All that being said, I will also add this about NaBloPoMo:  I enjoyed THIS challenge immensely for a few reasons:

1. I wrote at least 30 posts this month, excluding posts about my NaNovel.  This means that while I epically failed NaNo, I epically succeeded at NaBlo!!
2. I wrote about things I had never thought about before but was inspired to investigate.  My series on GMO food production was fun to do even if it wasn’t overly popular in my stats.  I learned stuff AND I got to hone my essayist skills.
3. I met incredible, new people through this experience!  This was by far the best reason to do it.  Meeting people is incredibly hard for me.  And I think I really like my new virtual pals. 🙂
4. I became a better writer.  So, unlike my NaNovel, which sucked, my blog post writing got better!  My writing got tighter, cleaner and more readable.
5. I will definitely do this again…just not while I’m also trying to do NaNoWriMo next year!!

Hope you had a great time writing your hearts out in November. It’s over now (for me, anyway, I’ve got tomorrow’s post already scheduled).

 Thank GOODNESS!