What. A. Month. That’s pretty much all I can start with. I came into November running and now at the end I’m limping out with my leg cut off. Personally, it’s been a hell of a month.
If I’m completely honest, I knew coming into November that it was going to be a difficult month. It gets dark earlier, the cold (even though I prefer it) and the general doom and gloom. That seasonal depression + just normal depression is not a very healthy combination in any aspects and even though that has absolutely nothing to do with writing, I think it’s important to take into consideration!
Let’s get something straight, I technically failed NaNoWriMo, as I only wrote 28,982 words (at the time of writing which is the 29th November) but I also won NaNoWriMo considering my personal goal was to reach 25k words. So I will be treating myself as I said in my last article!
But let’s get to the breakdown of the month, my thoughts and feelings and how I approached a whole host of issues.
Week 1
I started week one with a huge boost of motivation, to be honest, this was probably the best week out of the entire month. As university was still on strike, I was able to come home from work and write and spend my days sitting in various places, drinking various hot drinks (Costa for the win!) and writing. According to my statistics, I was averaging 2k words a day, well over my baseline of 1667 words a day.
I ended the week feeling confident, although on Sunday, I did feel the start of classic burnout.
Week 2
Week two started a lot like week one. I wrote a lot at work in the dead time I sometimes had. My work, however, can be pretty tiring so all I wanted to do when I got home was sleep. I broke my routine of the first week of writing before dinner and instead having a nap. My average words for this week was 1500 so as I had overwritten for the first week, it meant I could take it easy the second week!
Week 3
This week was the week from hell. A personal loss of my cat made it physically impossible to write! I went home and processed with my wonderful boyfriend so a big fat average of 3 words written per day. It obviously wasn’t the best thing to do, especially with my goal in mind, but my thought process was that if I wrote too much I’d burnout very quickly and simply just loose the will to finish the month, which I wasn’t prepared to do.
Week 4
I was back to 2k words a day this week and have done various write-ins via the NaNoWriMo youtube channel! They feature amazing authors such as R.L Stine and it helps to know that there’s hundreds of people writing alongside you, in that very moment. I’ve tried to channel my grief into my writing and am proud to say I think I’ve written some of the best spoken word in my life. The next goal is actually performing it but that’s another situation entirely. One of my goals for next year is to perform so I will be on the look out for events in Brighton!
So.. what next?
I’ve had a rollercoaster of a month and that has clearly affected my writing. My pros are definitely that it got me writing when I could. I also found that while procrastinating writing, I pushed myself to do other things like book an eye test and other boring adult things! I finish this month with some of the best spoken word I’ve ever written as well as a lot of feelings that I can channel into future writing too. My cons are that personally, November has been a horrible month, with everything going on, I could’ve used the time writing to practice a different form of self-care.
So would I count this as a success? Kinda! I achieved my goal word count and I feel like I learnt a lot about my habits when it came to writing and how I should learn to pace myself.
I hope my experience is useful to you and I’ll see all my fellow writers in Camp NaNoWriMo in April :)!