So, as I mentioned last month, like Siri, I too attempted Nano for the first time in many years.
And I did it! It took some finessing (I wrote 7K in the course of a night to catch up at one point), but it got done, and without any fudging on my part.
Every year that I am successful at Nano, I swear I’m going to keep going. Sure, not another 50K month in a row, but a significant amount, and the draft will be done in a few months, hooray!
Every year it doesn’t happen.
(Perhaps the worst offender of this was Shards, actually. I hit 50K at a rather privotal moment and stopped there, not even bothering to wrap up the scene. And every time I tried to go back to it, for months, I couldn’t figure out where to go and it got absolutely nowhere.)
(I mean obviously it did eventually, but you’d think I’d learn.)
(But apparently I haven’t.)
And this is true every winning November. Despite my best intentions, I can’t seem to keep going on my Nano novel, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether things were flowing well during November or not.
I’ve come up with some theories:
- Burnout. Maybe I’m just tried of that particular project. That doesn’t read particularly true, since I often spend several months to a year of consistent work on revisions or rewrites, but maybe! Or maybe I’m burned out on the pace and I need a break to calm my frazzled nerves.
- The thrill of a new year. December is kind of this weird liminal time. The year’s not quite over but it essentially is. A new year, with new possibilities, is right around the corner. I suppose some people try to stuff in everything on their list that hasn’t gotten done, but I like to just wait and start things over come January.
- Other projects. Nano takes up a good majority of my writing and writing-related time in November. I am not an especially fast writer (I average about 1200 words an hour) so I need all the time I can get. So other projects often get pushed to the backburner. (I think, outside of Nano, I wrote ~2K of character backstory, which is still Nano related, and published one nonfiction book.) And then, when November is over, those projects start to take more precedence again. (I’ve only written 300 words on my Nano project this month, but I did completely overhaul my email list organization and system, and I’ve made the cover and set up the pre-order for my next nonfiction book, and am doing the final edits now.)
Or, you know, it’s probably a combination of all three. But I still hold out hope that I’ll get back to it, sooner rather than later.
How’s December treating you?