Nanowrimo – Atlantis Fallen

A puzzling and disappointing Nanowrimo 2023. I made my fifty thousand words, but I lost track of time and forgot to upload and verify my manuscript by the deadline, so I don’t get my winner’s certificate and stuff. The purple bar on my profile there. For which I am hugely bummed.

I had joined up hoping for the fellowship of the experience, but it never materialized. Mostly my own fault. My region had several in-person write-ins, but I never got to them … because it’s hard to get me to do anything anywhere these days. Social anxiety. It ramps up around the holidays, there’s such an expectation to be vivacious and joyful damnit —

Anyway. The Nanowrimo website forums were pretty dead this year. There was some kind of horrible child-grooming scandal with the Young Writer Program message boards for kid writers, which was badly handled from what little I understand. So it’s no surprise people stayed away from the forums this year. Cause, ew.

I was planning to go to our local “thank God it’s over” party. But my brother wanted to see us. He is moving out of state, for good, this week. So that took precedence.

As for the actual writing, I made good progress on Majestic Seventeen, but it is far from done. People are telling me I have a trilogy on my hands. Did I mention that? Yeesh!

So, a strange and unsatisfying Nanowrimo. But I’m still going to buy the 2023 Winner T-shirt, because I did it, and I deserve it.

So I’m grinding away of my current book, Majestic Seventeen, 1000 words a day. I really hope to get it done by the end of the year (but I don’t want to overpromise.) But it’s November, National Novel Writing Month, why not join up and have the camaraderie of other Wrimos while you push through to the end? The daily quota is only 1227 words a day, I can do that!

So I surfed over the the Nano website and set up my novel and freshened up my profile. I’ve been doing Nanowrimo for years, 8 or 9 times, won four or five, about a 50 percent win rate. (Two of those losses were when we had deaths in the family, though, which really knocked me off my stride.) Some of those books I haven’t looked at since I uploaded them to the Nano website for validation at the end of November. One of them I lost to Hurricane Katrina (yes, been doing it that long.). But one of them became Daughter of Atlas, the first book I published, available here.

But it’s been a while since I’ve done it, and I forgot a few things. The daily quota to make 50,000 words in a month is 1667 words a day. Rather more than I thought. And that includes working every day. I’ve been taking weekends off lately. Writing is a job, you deserve time off. 1,000 words a day is a lot to me.

But that’s okay. The point of Nanowrimo is to push yourself, to make yourself work, to push through creative blocks. If I can just get this damn first draft finished by December 31, 2023 I will count it a success.

I lost all my Wrimo buddies on the Nano website, probably during a website upgrade. My handle over the is Kbot, all the way back from when I was still working shitty customer service jobs. So if you’re a WordPress denizen and you’re also doing Nano, hit me up. I need buddies!

And now I must return to the word mines. But I’m counting this blog post in the daily quota! 🙂

I’m not doing Nanowrimo this year. This is because I am already steadily working on something, my solarpunk novella, and I’d be a fool to dump that just in order to write a random NaNovel I’m not really into, because it’s November.

Some people use Nanowrimo to push themselves to work on something they already have on deck. That’s fine, and I’ve done that before, too. But I don’t feel the need to push myself to do 1667 words a day on the novella. I am happy with the 500 words a day I am currently doing. Besides (please god!) there aren’t 50,000 words left in the novella, so I wouldn’t be able to “win” Nanowrimo anyway, and that’s always a letdown. I’ve done it six times, and won it three times, so I don’t want to pull my average down less than 50 percent!

I do feel a little sad and nostalgic that I’m not doing it. I have a fondness for Nanowrimo after all. Daughter of Atlas was my first NaNovel, way back in the day. I miss the crazy camaraderie that comes from it, online and IRL. The past couple years I have run a series of Nanowrimo programs at my library, write-ins and pep talks, in which I would join the attendees in NaNoveling. That was fun. But there’s so much going on at my branch this November, other programs, major programs, and an election (my library is a polling place.) I can’t really wedge the write-ins in there, so that dampened my enthusiasm for the project too. A couple people in my writing workshop are first-timers and asked me if I was doing it too, and I’m sorry I can’t be there to help them.

But the fact is, the solarpunk is going well and I shouldn’t try to tamper with what’s currently working in order to meet an abstract ideal of “doing Nanowrimo.” That’s missing the point completely. Besides, there’s always next year.

So, good luck, those that are doing it. You can always message me if you have any questions or need advice. I’ll join you next year.

Category: Nanowrimo

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