NaNo Dud Confession

If you're wondering what happened with NaNoWriMo this year, it was a dud. For nine days I valiantly slogged through to the word count goal, and I never once, with any of those 10K+ words, got anywhere close to a glimpse of a drop of inspiration.

On Nov. 10 I woke up and thought:

1) If this write-til-you-have-a-breakthrough-and-gain-momentum thing were going to work for me this time around something should have happened by now,

and

2) I've been at this for nine days and am not having any fun at all, so why the frack am I putting myself through this?

Continuing to turn creative writing into what felt like a horrible punishment seemed like a waste of time I could be spending more pleasantly reading, or sewing, or working on one of the many in-progress non-fiction projects on my list, or catching up on the endless backlog of bookkeeping, or maybe even doing some laundry.

So, I bailed, feeling grateful for once that I am still a "pre-published" novelist and don't have an editor breathing down my neck or a contract that forces me to write to someone else's schedule.

I do believe there's a lot to be said for persisting in the face of writer's block, but I wasn't so much blocked on a work in progress as utterly and completely uninspired to do any kind of creative writing at all. Maybe all the stars were misaligned in my chart. Maybe it was the other distractions. Whatever is was, creative effort has to come from some kind of inspiration, and when inspiration is lacking the way to woo it back is to go do something else, preferably involving a good dose of fresh air and moderate exercise.

So, no NaNovel produced this year. But I'm back to my morning Pilates practice (which I had somehow dropped for about two years) and I'm going for walks again now that a bout of rainy weather has eased up, and those are both good things.

I do want to work on a new novel. Really, I do. I can feel that itch. But if one thing is clear from this failed NaNo effort, it's that the story I was trying to write isn't what I should be working on right now. There's another story out there, waiting for me to find my way to it. When I do, I'm gonna have my own private WaiNoWriMo here on Wainaku St. It's not gonna be this month, but maybe in January???