53,550 Words

I am finally coming up for air after thirty days of writing, writing, writing during NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month, when thousands of people all over the world are hunched over their laptops, tablets, computers, notebooks, journals, and phones, all trying to crank out 50,000 words in just thirty days.

I tried NaNoWriMo last year, but thanks to a) not having any real plot in mind and b) landing in the emergency room courtesy of some unfortunately seasoned green beans setting off my food allergies, I stalled out at 23,000 words. But still–23,000 words. Which is a lot of words, especially when I remember the days in high school where having a week to write a 250-word essay didn’t seem like enough time.

But this year was magic. I won, knocking at 53,550 words by midnight on November 30. And as wonderful as having drafted about 80 percent of a novel might be, I am coming of of the process with some really important life lessons and moments of self discovery.

1. In real life, I waste a lot of time. I truly wondered if this was the year to try NaNoWriMo again. We were hosting two big events at the museum and tearing down and setting up our major exhibit space. I’m also part of this year’s Leadership Franklin County class. These are all awesome things, but it means that I’m already pretty worn out half the time. But the reality is that when I get home, I can choose to while away my time in front of the television, or I can choose to spend some of that time writing. You can guess which of those two is easier.
2. Writing every day really is important. NaNoWriMo’s goal is 1,667 words a day. Some days, I all but fell asleep in my chair when I hit 300 words. On other days, I wrote more than 3,000 and had to force myself to stop so I could go to sleep. No matter what, touching that novel EVERY SINGLE DAY was what kept it real, kept it fluid, kept it moving. Those few times when I came back to it after missing a day  were the hardest, because it takes time to reconnect with the story’s soul if you’ve let it drift out of reach.
3. Understanding the central theme of my story helps me keep it moving better than knowing the plot. When I was in high school, I took a summer workshop with a professional storyteller. She insisted that a good story had a central theme you could describe in one or two words. It isn’t the plot, but that nugget of truth that drives the plot. And while I was making dinner one night, the word CONFINEMENT rang through my head and suddenly it was like flashes of light and rainbows and unicorns were dancing in circles around my novel and I was no longer flailing my arms for a life preserver of a plot. I was in the boat and the current of truth was taking me where I needed to go.
4. Tell the truth. This comes straight out of Stephen King’s miraculous book on writing. No matter what you’re writing about, for a reader to care about the story, it needs to ring true, even if that truth is painful or icky and makes you a little queasy.
5. Be accountable. The best thing about NaNoWriMo is that it forced me to set a goal and hold myself accountable to meet that goal. I touched base with one of the regional Kansas NaNoWriMo online communities almost every day. I posted my word count almost every day. And I took a few minutes every evening to cheer on other writers who were doing the same thing. It kept me going, it kept them going, and a whole lot of us made it to 50K.
6. Writing is exhilarating. Writing is also hard, frustrating, teeth-pulling, brain-grinding, gut-wrenching, and tear-inducing. But when it’s 12:30 in the morning and the you can barely type fast enough to keep up with the story that’s pouring our of your thoughts, it’s absolutely glorious.

November is over; my novel is not. But for the first time in three years–three years that include two abandoned drafts of novels and hundreds of hours researching true crimes for which I don’t think I have enough to write entire books about–I am finishing a draft. And that’s a glorious thing.