Article written by Ashleigh Lowry.
National Novel Writing Month, commonly referred to as NaNoWriMo or the even shorter-term NaNo, is a non-for-profit worldwide event that takes place during the whole month of November. The event encourages people to do something creative, write a 50,000-word novel. During the year the organisation hosts a couple of other non-for-profit events to show people of all ages the joy of writing. These include The Young Writers Program, The Come Write In and two Camp NaNoWriMos in April and July. I am a huge fan of this organisation their mission statement alone says so much and allows us to see how passionate these people are.
“National Novel Writing Month believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.” National Novel Writing Month, 2018
I am a relative newbie, having only taken part in one of the full November events and two camps, but am always so inspired to continue to take part, and I can donate to this great organisation. There are many who take part in this event and complete wonderful novels. One of my favourite novels, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, was written over three of NaNo events. The genre and topic of writing is up to the writer, with everything from screenplays to fan fiction, and everything in between, to be written during the main event month and camp months. This freedom and diversity allows for such a wondrous amount expression and creative energy to follow and inspire others to join the next time a NaNoWriMo event comes around.
This event, as both times I have participated, I didn’t complete my goal. However, I decided to, instead of looking at the negatives of my failure, look at the positives things I have accomplished along the way. This is how I turn around my point of view about my Camp NaNo experience.
As part of the camps instead of the full 50,000-word goal of the major event, you get to pick your word limit, which allows people to work at their own pace or to push themselves to see how far they can go. Both camps I have given myself a smaller goal, 20,000 and this year 10,000, but have reached it. With all three events, my life and procrastination habits got in the way and I couldn’t reach the goals in time. Though I admit, I have felt down and out about it as some of my friends complete their goals in a matter or day or over the month, I know that only I can be in charge of how I look at these challenges and goals I set for myself. I may not have completed my goal, although, I’ve done other things I can be proud of with my novels. I’ve created characters with personalities & quirks, invented holidays & countries and most important importantly I finally got an idea down on paper (or screen). No matter how rough it is, it has a form, it has sentences, paragraphs and it may even have a title. That is what I should be proud of, that even if I didn’t achieve one part of the month, I completed other things.
Work, school and life in general gets in the way as well, and this time, for me, it was prevalent. I had a minor health issues, university assignments and adult responsibilities (house inspections, centrelink trips, etc.) take place over the month, all of which eat at my free time to work of my writing. At the time of these things taking place, I didn’t mind because I was focused on other things, getting better, passing my course and completing my responsibilities. However, as the last few week of April’s camp NaNo came around, I again couldn’t help feeling I could have organised my life a little better to make time for myself and my writing. I found myself blaming my own downfalls of disorganisation and forgetfulness and being harsh on my own ability to complete tasks. After talking with friends and family I came to remind myself that again, that even though I haven’t completed the task I set out to, I’ve completed others along the way, I took responsibility for my own health instead of wishing it way, I dedicated time to make important decisions about my future & then took steps to forwarding myself towards that, and finished & submitted one of the hardest university assignments I have ever had to do. In those things alone, I should allow myself to be proud of but I have been shadowing them with this cloud of failure. By removing that negativity, I could focus on all these wonderful and difficult things I had accomplished over the month. Taking these personal life wins focusing on them instead of the fail of the creative one.
I won’t denounce my failure altogether however. It has reminded me of the importance of preparation, setting small achievable goals instead of impossible ones, assessing situations and sometimes just accepting that you are not going to win everything but that is okay. Even if you don’t win the big event, you learn small things along the way that help maybe win the next one. That determination is the thing that is so strong that makes me want to try again and I will, because I refuse to let negativity beat me. It may not be next camp or next NaNo but I know one event in the future I will reach the goal I set for myself. However, until then I will continue to allow my small NaNo wins to guide me into bigger ones and who knows maybe in August or November I might be writing an article about finally completing my National Novel Writing Month goal.
Either way I am still going to keep writing.
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