Well, we’re halfway through the month and if you are NaNoWriMo-ing then you should be around 25k into your work. Where am I? About eleven thousand words.
I have pretty much given up on NaNo this year, not because I’m not writing, quite the opposite in fact. So do I feel like I’m failing? Actually, yeah a little bit, but there’s absolutely no reason for me to feel that way, it’s not like I’m not working.
The reason I’m not NaNo-ing is that I’m working through my collection of short stories “Last Cut Case Book” as I need to get that finalised asap; I’m editing on my steampunk novel which I’ve had back from my editor and now want to polish, and I am still working on the novel I had finally settled on for NaNo, just not concentrating on that alone and therefore not writing it as fast as NaNo requires.
I know I’m not the only one who has given up, I’ve seen similar posts on Facebook and Twitter, and in blogs. Not just this year either. This is the fourth year I’ve started Nano, but it’s the first year that I haven’t been a winner. So why do people not complete the challenge?
I’ve heard some people complain that it’s one of the shorter months, which I honestly don’t get. It’s not February there are still 30 days, plenty of time if you devote yourself, one more day won’t make that much difference.
I’ve heard that a number of my American friends say it’s difficult because they are preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas – that I get, but then it was all started in America so I’m sure that was taken into consideration.
My own issues are that it’s my birthday this month, right at the end admittedly and I don’t have to do much for that. But this year I’m also off to Iceland Noir and that’s basically a week away from home and I don’t even know if I can take my laptop yet. However, at a minimum, I will be taking my tab, so I can write on that.
Anyway, my point in writing this is to say that, just because we might not be NaNoWriMo winners, that doesn’t make any of us losers.
The Write Route 