NaNoWriMo - A Personal Retrospective

I had participated in NaNoWriMo every year from 2005 through 2011, enjoying the exhilaration of rapid writing each time.  A few of those years, I blogged about my experiences, and once even wrote with friends in Second Life.

As a result I have seven drafts of novels I would never have written had I not participated. And I learned more from those experiences about the benefits of rapid writing than I care to recount in this post.

But all seven of those novels languished in the months (and years) following NaNo. Not only did I do nothing with them, but reviewing, completing, and editing them daunted and pained me beyond my tolerance. Perhaps I will find the courage to rebirth and nurture one of them toward publication at some point.

Writing during the years since, I've learned that, at this point in my life, my style lends itself much better to writing slowly. I've returned to the paper journals and notebooks I'd long ago abandoned in favor of the "faster, better" laptop and tablet.  Keeping the hand moving, writing until the fingers cramp and the wrist requires shaking out, synchronizes my body with the fluid dream I'm trying to bring to life on the page.  Blogging seems to yield to technology; but then I'd made my living for decades from writing non-fiction prose.

My days of NaNo may be over, but my appreciation for the pure joy of writing that NaNoWriMo gave me continues to shine in memory.  Good luck to those of you who are immersed in it this month.  May you all become NaNoWriMo Winners!