I started participating in the NaNoWriMo challenge about six years ago. At the time, I was working full-time and going to school part-time working on my Master's degree. I didn't have time to attempt to write a 50K word novel during the month of November. I was already writing long papers for classes, but I managed to squeeze in around 40,000 words. I didn't complete the challenge, but I tried hard.
The next year, I tried again, although I was still going to school. I wrote a young adult novel that had 32,000 words. Again, I didn't complete the word challenge, but I finished the book.
Over the next many years, I've joined in the NaNoWriMo challenge, writing as much as I could during the month of November, sometimes writing the full 50K, and sometimes not.
Then, I learned there is Camp NaNoWriMo in July! What I like about the Camp NaNoWriMo is that there isn't the challenge to write 50K words. It's just set your own challenge and do it.
The last few years, I've used the opportunity to challenge myself to edit what I'd written, but this year, I wanted to write something new. I've had a story floating in my head about a woman who had been the lead singer in a 90's girl band nearly thirty years ago. The opportunity to have a thirty-year anniversary performance come up, but she had to decide if she's ready to confront the past and the band's sudden breakup nearly three decades ago. The working title of the book is Crimson Mist. (Don't you love that? It's the name of her 90's band.)
Yesterday, I had a mostly free day, so I wrote. And wrote and wrote and it felt so good. I finally told myself to stop last night after eleven and when I tallied up my words for the day, I had written more than 13 thousand words. Never have I written so much in one day. I went to bed feeling accomplished.
Then, I woke up this morning, sat down to write again, and tried to get my mind back into gear. And all I could think about was how stupid everything I wrote yesterday was. What was I doing? This story isn't going to work. It's really dumb.
I mentioned this to my daughters who said, don't worry about it. Just write it all out because you love to write.
And they are RIGHT. I write because I love to. I write because it gives me joy. And, if in the end, it turns into a real book, so much the better. I hope that Crimson Mist becomes a real book one day, but even if it doesn't, I can be proud of my accomplishments and knowing that I spent the day doing something that I loved.