I did it. I can hardly believe it, but I did it. I wrote my first novel. I did it in the crazed 30 day haze known as National Novel Writing Month. Now that I’ve done it I don’t know that I’ll do it again. Not because it was hard (which it is) or because it doesn’t fit my writing or lifestyle (it really doesn’t), but because I got out of it what I needed to, the knowledge that I could write a novel.
National Novel Writing Month Winner 2013 Banner
Note I did not say a good novel. What I wrote it pretty awful at this point. It needs major rewrites and editing, and that’s OK. Because I realized during NaNoWriMo this time (this was my third attempt) that the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs written down. The good part comes later (hopefully).
I, like a lot of us, have a lot of stories that I want to tell. But I have gotten so afraid that they aren’t going to come out the way that I want them to, or that people won’t like them, that I’ve been afraid to tell them. Thanks to those crazy 30 days in November of 2013 I’ve gotten over a lot of that. Maybe not completely. I’ll still be nervous sharing what I write, but aren’t we all? It’s like exposing part of our souls, and that’s tough no matter how you look at it, but before I can do that I have to actually get the stories out of my head and on to the page. This is something I now know I can do.
So look for more blog posts as I make my way back from my writing crazy writing adventure. I learned some interesting things about myself, about my writing process, a lot about how far I’ll go to procrastinate, and maybe most importantly – how far I’ll go to make sure my story gets told.
We're All Just Stories in the End 