IWSG—My ninth official NaNo

It’s time again for The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which meets the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

This month’s question is:

November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

This is my ninth official NaNo, and my twelfth overall. I unofficially participated in 2010, 2011, and 2012, though I didn’t sign up because I mistakenly believed the objective was to write a book complete at only 50,000 words. Once I discovered you don’t have to complete your book and that 50K is just the bare minimum, I finally signed up. I later retroactively, honestly added my wordcount from those three unofficial Novembers to my stats page.

The reason I didn’t participate in 2013 was because I was having a lot of computer issues and only was able to work on three chapters of Dark Forest. My fan’s broken left vent was making unbearably loud noises constantly, and the computer was also having a few other issues. I didn’t write anywhere close to 50K that month.

The technical issues temporarily resolved, though they later came back and were so unbearable I had no choice but to get a new (used) computer in August 2014. Amazingly, that 2007 MacBook Pro laptop still works! I need to use it every so often to get old photos from my library, and when I need a backup for my current younger computer. It also has an awesome collection of Solitaire games which isn’t compatible with newer computer software.

Perhaps because I rarely use that computer anymore, and usually don’t use it for very long stretches, the fan noise has much improved.

As discussed in my October IWSG post, I decided to work on a near-total gut renovation of Almost As an Afterthought: The First Six Months of 1941 for NaNo 2022. I really hope I can redeem myself for my poor showings the last two years, only 53K in 2020 and barely crawling across the finish line with 50,051 in 2021 at ten minutes to midnight.

While lockdown did wreck my mental health and trigger my cyclical depression, I didn’t take enough personal responsibility for keeping my writing momentum afloat. Like Rustico in the most famously raunchy story of The Decameron, I shrugged and surrendered without a battle instead of fighting for what I know I’m capable of.

Since 2017, I’ve counted my blog posts as creative nonfiction towards my NaNo wordcount. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to win in 2017 if I hadn’t included my 12-part series “The Jazz Singer at 90.” Writing that series gave me back my writing mojo when it was at such a low point, and finally made me excited and confident about my writing for the first time in a long time.

This year, I wrote as many November posts in advance as possible, so I can devote most of my time and energies to Almost As an Afterthought.

The key storyline of Almost As an Afterthought is Cinni’s longing to enroll in her school’s progressive track when she starts junior high, and her ever-increasing love of history. Her mother is adamantly opposed to it, and wants Cinni to remain in the general track. Kit wants to move to the progressive track too, and her mother, whom she’s always had a very acrimonious relationship with, is also opposed.

Meanwhile, many of their friends decide to take the qualifying tests and apply for scholarships. It would mean the world to Cinni if they could all stay together and have such a golden opportunity for a better future.

Until last year, I was always a NaNo overachiever. My all-time best year was 2018, when I wrote almost 131K. In 2019, I pulled 101K. If I can redeem myself and prove I’m still capable of writing a few thousand words a day, I hope that can carry through to post-NaNo writing, as it did in 2017.

And if I not only win but return to real overachieving, I’ll reward myself with my dozenth ear piercing, combined with the second nostril piercing I hope I can get for my birthday in December (after very unhappily being forced to cancel at the last minute last year).

Are you participating in NaNo this year? Have you done it in the past, and what was your experience like?