Hard to Write? Keep Going!

This Nano really is the hardest ever for me.

It’s not just that 50,000 words is a quite a lot or that I’m exhausted with my 3-year-old, demanding far more attention than she did last year or the year before. That would have been hard, don’t get me wrong, and the first few days I saw how challenging just that part was.

And then the election happened.

And now, every time I set myself to the task, I start to feel less and less secure about the outcome. My brain fills with asinine and unhelpful commentary instead of prose. It’s like my own personal muse is suffering from untreated clinical depression and I’m stuck with a mopey fairy bringing down whatever little I can put into the book today.

I’ve included all my November blog posts in my word count, which is not what a professional writer would do, because a professional writer would have a lot of things I don’t, like time and the ability to focus. I’ve got so little energy that I was falling asleep while writing last night despite writing a scene I was interested in. Very much so. I had great ideas for the glimpse of this conversation I had seen in my mind’s eye and I started into it and woke up 3 lines later, most of what I had put down fairly unintelligible and lost to unconsciousness.

Just like earlier this year, I am giving myself a damned break. I need to just let it be okay. This is not the year that I complete all the things. This is the year that I do what I can and try to get something like a working draft of this story together before the end of nano. If that’s only 30,000 words, that’s fine. My other 20k will be non-fic blog-style, which just has to happen sometimes.

So if you find yourself questioning why you even bother putting words on the page this November, because there’s a lot of crazy reprehensible shit going on out there in the real world and your little idle book writing isn’t going to do any good to any one ever so why do you even try….

Remember JK. Remember that J.K Rowling was a single mom on welfare writing in a coffee shop. She had to have weak moments too, when she felt like maybe throwing in the towel and getting some stupid minimum wage kick might at least keep food on the table, and how could her meager little writing do any good for any one?
But it did. I dare say it saved the world. This series didn’t just create a wizarding world of imagination and delight, but also made clever, well-developed points about tolerance and loving your fellow humans, mudblood, muggle, or otherwise. The time and energy she put into creating, crafting and polishing the stories helped turn it into the success it had been, but without just sitting down and writing, it would only have been the weird thoughts of some impoverished woman in England.

If she could make it happen and if her books could change a generation, then your writing can mean something, even if only to you.


Honestly, in my critical self-analysis, I also realize that my tendency toward the first person when emotional now points to some great strides in my brain’s decisions to combat things head on, rather than internalizing them to a point where they can only be riddled out through great works of fiction. Might make me a significantly less awesome writer, but a lot happier person.

So if you’re feeling lost or stuck in your NaNoWriMo novel, or any other project you’re attempting this month that seems insurmountable, remember JK. Remember that what you choose to do with your time had value and meaning.
You have value and meaning.
Just in case you needed to hear that today.