I participated in NaNoWriMo last year. That’s National Novel Writing Month. It’s in November, and the object of participating is to write the first draft of a novel of at least 50,000 words in those 30 days. It was great, it was horrible, it was amazing, it was painful…and I can’t do it this year.
I hurt myself doing it last year, literally. My hands were in such bad shape by the end that I was handwriting everything and then Toph was typing it all in for me each evening. I could not type. It was torture to sit at my computer. And the effects of the exercise linger today, as I still battle pain in my hands and throughout my body. We think that the experience, the long term inflammation that I created in my body by pushing so hard, caused fibromyalgia (or at least exacerbated the condition enough that it became more than an occasional nuisance that I barely noticed). Now I dread what the winter may bring, because I seem to react adversely to the cold weather. And it doesn’t even get that cold here in Florida. We shall see.
Instead of trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days towards a completely new project, I am taking the months of October, November and December to write 50,000 words and for the most part, I am using the time to flesh out the novel I started last November. I did reach the 50,000 word mark last year, but the story I was left with was incomplete. Many of the scenes I wrote cannot be used in the story now that I am editing and refining the story. So, now I am left to create new scenes, to make the old and the new mesh. With any luck, the effort will push the story along and motivate me to get it edited and eventually submitted for publication.
I am sad that I cannot participate in Nano as it is meant to be done. 50,000 words in a month is truly an exhilarating goal to meet. It requires pushing harder, longer, and faster and sparks all sorts of creative fires inside of me. But I can’t afford another winter like i had last year. So, slow and easy is the route I will take.
Here is my current word count and what I should have written by now to meet my goal of 50K by December 31st:
5,933 words to date/need 9,000 by Sunday to be on pace for the end goal
I did not write at all last week, but the last two days have yielded at least twice my goal word count of 600 per day so I’m catching up. Expect weekly updates, at least. I don’t think I’ll do daily or even multiple times daily updates as I did last year during Nano. It got a little ridiculous then. 
