Why I'm Not Doing NaNoWriMo This Year

November is coming up, and that means cooler Fall weather, Thanksgiving, Black Friday (ugh!), and National Novel Writing Month. Writers everywhere are getting ready for NaNoWriMo, stocking up on their coffee and snacks to basically become a hermit for the month.

NaNoWriMo is the event where writers gear up to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That equals to 1,667 words a day. It’s not a hard number to reach, once you get on a roll and the words just flow out. I did NaNoWriMo back in 2013. I was working retail at the time, five days a week for six hours a day. I could only write at night. On my days off, I was watching my grandson and catching up on housework. I fell about five days behind, but ended up finishing with a day to spare. Yep, I got the T-shirt.

There are benefits of doing NaNoWriMo. You get disciplined in your writing. You have to reach your daily goal in order to meet the monthly goal of 50,000 words. If you set a time to write every day, and keep on that schedule, you’re golden. It is attainable. 1,667 words a day is only something like three-and-a-half pages a day. Easy if you only have a few hours a day. A lot of people write more each day because their goal is more than the 50,000 words needed to finish. Another benefit is you have a novel at the end of the month. How cool is that? I think stating that you were a NaNoWriMo Winner on your resumé looks pretty good, too. It shows that you have discipline to finish a task.

So, why am I not doing NaNoWriMo this year?

1. NaNoWriMo can be stressful. If you have an outside job, you can only write at night. That’s where the coffee comes into play. You’re drinking your coffee (or tea, in my case. Earl Grey. Hot) to stay up to write. After you’ve had all that caffeine, how are you going to sleep? If you have a job to get up for the next day, you need your sleep, unless you like the warmed over zombie look. You then get stressed because you’re not able to sleep because of the caffeine. You may feel pressured to make your daily quota of words (1,667, remember?), and if you have writer’s block, you’re sitting there staring at a blank screen, stressing over your daily word count.

2. You may not do your best work. In writing your 50,000 word novel in 30 days, your writing may suffer. I know mine did. I wrote Volcano Winter in 30 days. There were some great parts, but there were also sucky parts as well. I feel I let the characterization suffer.

3. You may suffer from burn-out. After I finished NaNoWriMo, I intended to let the novel sit for only a month or so, take a breather from it, and then edit it. Where is it now, you may ask? Still on my hard drive, waiting to be edited. I will get back to it—eventually. After I finish my other projects.

4. You miss out on other things in life. If you can strike a good balance between writing and life, that’s great, and is probably the best way to do this. You can get so focused on writing that you let things slip past you. I felt like I was a tyrant. “Leave me alone, I’m writing.” Dinner was fast-food. I would whip up something fast and throw it on the table.

Many people enjoy National Novel Writing Month and look forward to it each year. This year, I may not officially enter it, but I will work to be more disciplined during the month of November while working on my next novel, The Elixir Trade, which is already in progress and therefore not eligible for NaNoWriMo. While I did enjoy the writing aspect of it, I didn’t enjoy the stress of trying to catch up once I fell behind. I can say that I accomplished my goal of 50,000 words in 30 days, which is something to be proud of. Good luck to all you WriMos out there!

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