It is with a heavy heart that I announce that I will not win Nanowrimo this year.
This was a huge decision and I did not make it lightly. After all, I could have done it. I’ve pulled myself out of worse word deficits than this one.
And it’s not the word “losing” that gets me. Winning and losing don’t usually matter to me. I’m not a competitive person, I’m a successful person.
In the past, Nanowrimo has resulted in two very successful first drafts. Each was almost exactly 50,000 words, each was a complete story, and each novel was a Nanowrimo “winner.” The root of my apprehension about “losing” Nanowrimo was not that it’s called “losing,” it was my fear of failure. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to write a successful first draft without it. Once I came to that realization, I saw how silly it is.
I do not need to write a first draft in one month. Not if that means writing when I’m physically and emotionally exhausted for days on end because my baby won’t sleep for more than half an hour for some crazy biological reason (Hello, wonder week). Not when it means that I’m living in chaos, with a 2-month-old and a kitchen-less, sometimes laundry-less house, with used spit-up rags stashed everywhere and dishes drying on the dining room table. Not when it means that I’m giving up precious time with my husband who spends all day and most evenings working with urban kids and most of his nights building me a kitchen.
So maybe this is a little bit dramatic, but, come on, I’m a trained actor and I miss the stage. I’m allowed to be dramatic from time to time.
The rough draft of Bearded is going to be the first one that I write in more than a month.
But it will get written.
And it will be stupendous. (Well, not the first draft. The first draft will probably be kinda sucky. But after I revise it a few times and then a few more times it will be stupendous).
With that, I’ll leave you with a cute picture and a word count (don’t worry, I won’t give that up- I need some kind of accountability!):
Word count: 24,092
Laura Lee Anderson 