Many if not most of you probably don't know that November is National Novel Writing Month, or NanWriMo. The goal is, as you may have deduced, to write a novel in one month. This means that participants are trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days. If you were wondering, that means 1,666 words per day. This is, in fact, many, many words.
Last year I won Nano, which means that I did, in fact, write all 50,000 words, plus an extra few hundred. Was my novel absolutely appalling? Yes, of course. But I spent the last year editing said manuscript, and some parts don't suck nearly as much as they used to. The best part is that since it was such a rush to churn out words, I don't remember writing a fair chunk of the novel. I'm only about three quarters of the way through editing it, but what I have so far already tallies over the 50,000 word goal that I was trying to reach.
Now in 2015 I was a high school senior. My schoolwork was already entering the "senior slump" and I had plenty of time on my hands to write. In addition, I was in a creative writing class where I was allowed to work on Nano for an hour and a half every other day, so that gave me even more time to transfer my thoughts through my keyboard. This year is a bit of a different story.
While I'm enrolled in half as many classes this semester as I was this time last year, the workload is about the same. I also have a job that I work ten hours a week. There are a ton of good movies coming out in November, including but not limited to both the Marvel and Harry Potter fandoms, and my roommate and I decided to watch all of the Lord of the Rings movies this weekend, which was probably a mistake, but YOLO. The simple fact of the matter is that I don't have as much time as I ought in order to do an adequate job at Nano.
Yet for some reason I'm still trying. As of today I'm halfway there, with just over 25,000 words (25,137, to be exact). Did I stay up till two in the morning last night to reach said quota? Maybe. But is it worth it? Again, yes.
Today in art class my teacher described the process well. He was talking about drawing, but the concept definitely still applies. He said that when your skill is less than the difficulty of your project you get anxious and frustrated. I can definitely attest to this. The other day I was trying to write a scene that came later on in the plot and I simply couldn't. I didn't know how the main character was supposed to develop or how she would address those around her. It was frustrating and I was pausing after every line I wrote, over analyzing it, sick of the whole process.
My teacher said the opposite holds true as well: when your skill is higher than the difficulty of the task, then it's boring, busywork. For me this is when I have to write descriptions. Sure, it's easy to be elaborate and up the word count, but it doesn't interest me. I don't really care if someone's shirt is purple, or if it's "a deep plum, like that of wine cascading into a silver goblet". Yes, that is something I actually wrote. Don't judge, I was probably delirious from sleep deprivation.
Lastly, my teacher stated that the best moment in art is when your skill matches the difficulty level of your task, also known as flow. This is when I lose track of time, when I don't check the word count every time I finish a sentence (ctrl+shift+c is my new favorite tool in Google Docs). Flow is when I glance at the clock and it suddenly reads 2:01, but I can't stop writing. I don't even know what my fingers are going to type, but it works. These are the passages that when I go back and re-read them, I'm proud. It just works, and I don't know why, I can't explain what I like about my writing, it just sounds right.
It's been harder for me to find my flow this time around than the last. I think it's because the difficulty level is higher than my skill. Time is a precious commodity, and one I had much more of last year rather than this. My writing is struggling as a consequence, a fact that is blatantly obvious. That being said, I'm still finding myself enjoying the challenge. I'm curious to see if I can do it. If I manage to get a final product by November 30, then I know I will be intensely proud, regardless of the quality of the writing. Will I be able to do so? I don't know. I'll let you know in sixteen days (not that I'm counting or anything).
PS: the irony is not lost on me that I'm spending time writing that can't be copied and pasted into my Nano story. A main point of this article is how time is limited, yet here I am spending a fair chunk complaining about how I don't have enough time. Obviously marathon-ing Lord of the Rings and crocheting a sweater in three days hasn't taught me my lesson yet.
