I Won NaNoWriMo!

For those of you are wondering why I have not posted on my blog in over a month, the answer is NaNoWriMo. November is National Novel Writing Month, a/k/a NaNoWriMo. Most of you have probably never heard of it, some of you are intimately and painfully familiar with it. In 1999 some crazy writer challenged twenty friends to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. Ten years and thousands of novels later there are over 100,000 participants in NaNoWriMo from all over the world. Last year over 20,000 writers made the deadline and gave birth to the first draft of a novel. Maybe a bad novel, but still a novel.

2009 was my first year as a participant, and I am proud to say I crawled over the finish line this morning with 51,459 words. Now I am feeling a little lost and disoriented, like a bear emerging from the cave after a long winter hibernation. I am still stunned in disbelief that I actually did it. I actually wrote a first draft of a novel! I will let it lie for a few weeks, then see if it's worth dusting off for a rewrite.

I may cringe in horror at the garbage I wrote and hit delete faster than you can blink. Or there may be some good bones that I can salvage and fashion into another, better novel after several rewrites. It doesn't really matter how good or bad it is. What matters are the valuable lessons I learned from the process of writing it.

I learned that I don't really need to see friends or family or even talk to them for an entire month. I learned that I can eat pizza with one hand while hunting and pecking with the other. I learned that I don't really need to shower every single day - there's a water shortage, people! I learned that my dog can hold it for much longer than I ever thought possible. I learned that sleep is overrated. I learned that it's okay to describe what every single guest at a dinner party is wearing. I learned that it makes perfect sense for a sleuthing couple to crash a wedding reception and do the chicken dance.


Now for the most important thing I learned:
There is a common and recurring theme in every book on writing, every author interview, and every article on how to become a writer. "Just write." They all say it. Just write and the plot will unfold on its own; just write and characters will come alive and begin making their own decisions. Even though I've read "just write" over and over again I never really understood the purity of those words. I could never "just write," I don't have time, I have a job. I don't know what my story is about. I don't know how to describe a sunset. I don't know how to convey that my character is heartbroken. What NaNoWriMo taught me is how to just write. The goal is to achieve quantity, not quality. Let go of trying to write well and simply free your fingers to fly over the keyboard. The words will appear on the page in a long string of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. It doesn't matter now if it's good. No first draft is good, unless maybe you're Stephen King. You're going to rewrite it. You're going to embellish, add details; you're going to delete big chunks; you're going to change names, locations, maybe even hairstyles. It truly doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. No one's going to see your first naked, cringing draft except you. No one, not even your dog.

Bottom line, you can't rewrite a blank page.

Thank you, NaNoWriMo, for teaching me to "just write."