There's a lot of things built to distract us in a day; there's the endless internet, the hours of music on our playlists on spotify, pets to cuddle with, movies and shows to binge, coffee and tea to drink, friends to socialize with, and of course, books to read. There's just a constant cycle of things to do to procrastinate on actually writing something down.
Take now for instance. It took me a good fifteen minutes of clicking through pictures to find the right one to add alongside this blog post. Fifteen minutes. That's a quarter of an hour wasted looking at old typewriters and fountain pens stylized and propped next to sheets of notebook paper and bookshelves to fit some aesthetic that I'm not even sure is entirely working. All while procrastinating on writing this exact blog post.
Ten minutes later I finally find the right mood of music from my dozen or so playlists and I'm ready to start writing. It's been almost half an hour since I first sat down to get this done, but I'm ready now.
And...I've got nothing.
Writing is hard.
Today is November 30th, and for those following along, it means that today is the last day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the last day to squeeze in those words to somehow get that elusive goal of 50K. It's been thirty days of frantic writing and a lot of word vomit, but I've managed to eek out a little over 51,000 words. Phew, it was a little exhausting to be completely honest.
These last thirty days have not been easy, a novel in a month sounds like a fun challenge at first but it becomes a lot more intimidating when you're halfway through the month but your word count is only 10K in. There were days where I was only able to get 200 words on the page and then I immediately wanted to erase them forever, it was that bad. But there were other days when I would write and then a few hours later I'd check my word count and be blown away that I had somehow gotten 3,000 words onto the page. And so days came and days went, and the words kept coming.
Now, on this final day of NaNoWriMo, after a month of feverish writing to somehow get a novel down for the world (or even just myself) to see, I'm still not done. And I think that's one of the great things I've learned while completing this challenge: I'm doing this because I love it. And it doesn't matter if some of the things that I write aren't Pulitzer winning materials, all that matters is that I'm doing it. I'm writing. And I'm still doing it.
It's only appropriate then, that the last day of NaNoWriMo also happens to fall on the One Year Anniversary of my first blog post here online. What better way to cap off the month dedicated to writers, than to celebrate one entire year since I decided to share my writing beyond the borders of my spiral notebook and my laptop.
Thanks for sticking with me this far! It's been a long journey and there's still so much further to go. Let's see what this next year can bring!
:) Kathryn