Four years ago this November, I did NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, that stands for “National Novel Writing Month” and it requires the participant to write a 50,000 word draft (a short novel) between November 1 and November 30. It’s verified by an official website, and at the end you receive a certificate. Four years ago, I had an idea for a YA novel I wanted to write, and I had a little extra time on my hands. I had just had my second baby, Eleanor Lily, nine days earlier.
That sounds like a contradiction, but consider:
- Eleanor wasn’t my first baby. If she’d been my first, I’d have been completely consumed with the newness of being a mother and the constant second-guessing of my parenting, leaving zero creative capacity.
- Eleanor was an easy, sleepy baby. She took at least 2 long naps every day as a newborn, and while I was waking up a few times every night to feed her, she didn’t fuss much and I could always get back to sleep fairly quickly (very unlike my first baby).
- My older child was old enough to be in daycare and preschool, and I had a quiet house for at least a few hours every day. I could strap Eleanor to my chest and enjoy the warmth of her downy newborn head against my chest as I wrote.
The result was a NaNoWriMo “win,” for which I still proudly display the certificate. 50,000 words in 30 days, averaging to about 2,000 new words per day (allowing for an occasional day off). The final novel clocked in about 62K and was finished in mid-December. Afterward, I promptly stuck the book in the figurative writing drawer. I never had any intention of publishing it, at least not yet– I want to be established as an adult fiction author before branching out to YA or memoir, my other interests. But it was a book that was sitting inside me, and it felt good to get it out.
(Incidentally, the book was called “Cassie’s Cadence” and it’s about a classically-trained teen musician with a gay father and straight mother who joins an award-winning marching band and realizes that her oboe skills don’t translate.)
I haven’t felt compelled to do NaNoWriMo since. It’s off my bucket list after doing it once, and since I write daily year-round, I don’t necessarily need a targeted push to write more in November. Life is busy with two (non-baby) kids and a full-time job. And you can’t always control for when a novel idea hits you strong enough to invest a full month of hard work.
But this year I want to try something a little different. Not a word count goal (that would be too stressful and time-consuming right now) but a content goal. I want to write more personal essays, and I want to push myself on form. So my plan is to take three weeks in November and write a new flash essay (approx. 1,000 words) every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. On Thursday and Friday, I’ll choose one of the drafts to edit and fine-tune. The hope is that I’ll have three edited, publishable essays by the end of the three weeks, and six more that have potential.
I’m excited about this project, and plan to blog about it over the course of the month to let you know how it’s going.
Week 1 Plan
Since I’m still finishing an actual flash essay class (“The Art of Flash” through Cleaver magazine) this week, I’m only going to write one essay, since it’s due for the class. This week’s assignment is a hermit-crab essay (an essay in nontraditional form) and I’m really excited about it. I’ll also be doing the reading and commenting for the class. Here are my writing goals for week one:
- Draft 1 of hermit crab essay
- Draft 2 of hermit crab essay
- Final draft and submission of hermit crab essay by Wednesday 11/3 (deadline)
- Readings and comments on other writers’ work
- Make list of 9-12 essay ideas
- Sort the ideas in a table by topic, title, and inspiration. (The inspiration piece is key; I like to read essays from journals I want to submit to, and then model my own off of those. It inspires me and invokes deeper creativity.)
- Write a blog post next Sunday about my progress.
It’s a bit ambitious, but do-able, and it’s keeping my mind off the other stressors of the week: the election and rise of COVID cases, of course, but also some work-related stress.
In challenging times, create more. Creativity takes big emotions and puts them in a container outside ourselves, whether it be writing, painting, knitting, or baking.
(If you need help with this, consider signing up for my email newsletter, The Joyful Creative. My weekly onboarding series can help you get started on healing through creativity.)