I Wrote a Novel in November

Here’s what I learnt — hint writing is hard!

Part of my reasoning for joining this challenge was to get a chunk of my book written, which I had originally aimed to complete this year. 2020 definitely threw a few curve balls into my life (as I’m sure it did for many of us) so none of my goals this year went exactly to plan, but this seemed like a great opportunity to get back on track.

Whilst it’s still unlikely I will reach my original goal, I am a lot closer to finishing my project thanks to this experience. Between full-time work and general pandemic fatigue (anyone else feeling drained?) I haven’t been writing much, I’ve had the best intentions such as signing up to Medium to write more, but as they say the best-laid plans…

However, writing every day for a month on my creative project taught me a few things which I wanted to share.

Maybe next year you will join the challenge, there’s another in July so you don’t even have to wait all year. If you’re anything like me, sometimes you just need a push to get writing.

I bet you didn’t know this — my groundbreaking realisation hit somewhere on my daily writing sprints.

To complete NaNoWriMo in 30 days, you need to write 1,667 words per day consistently. Some people write more or less varying it depending on their schedule.

I tried to stick to this goal; it doesn’t seem a lot at first but I got to the point where each word felt like a burden; I was wading through metaphorical concrete to hit the target.

That’s when I realised the career I have chosen is not an easy one, writing is hard — sometimes it feels impossible.

It might be true that writers are born and not made as who would choose to be a slave to words, to struggle with a craft that drives you mad as you battle to find the next word and the next sentence. This isn’t an easy life, but maybe it’s not meant to be.

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