This year I’ve decided to try National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, for the first time. I’ve had the itch to try my hand at prose again for the past few months, and I figured what better opportunity to see if I’ve grown since my first attempt at a novel than a month dedicated to it.
NaNoWriMo isn’t until November and I’m already nervous.
For those who don’t know, my first attempt at something creative when I got out of college was a fantasy novel. I’d worked on it all throughout my senior year and had written several hundred pages. And it was terrible. Most of my friends and family I showed it to couldn’t get through it. Thankfully I fell into the world of webcomics instead, so it wasn’t a total loss.
And now, over twenty years later, having written many stories that many people have enjoyed, I think I’m finally ready to give a novel a second try. I also have twenty years of story-writing and life experiences under my belt, two things I didn’t have during my first attempt. But even with all that going for me, even though I’m better prepared than I was back then, I’m still nervous.
What I have to keep reminding myself is that NaNoWriMo is supposed to be for fun, not publication! This is meant to be an exercise, not a rush to complete a manuscript or a serious deadline to meet. Whatever I put down will likely never see the light of day, and that’s fine. The point is the act of doing, not the quality of the work. I need to remind myself that I will have achieved this goal if I remain dedicated and just put something, anything, down onto the page. I need to remember that there’s no need to hold myself up to an imaginary standard for this.
What will this novel be about? I have no idea. I’ll probably sit down, bang out a few sentences, and see where it goes. It could come to me with surprising ease or I will struggle. It could be a short and sweet narrative or it could be a rambling mess. Whatever it will be I will take comfort in knowing that, no matter what, it will be better than my first attempt at a novel.