Why I Love NaNoWriMo
I love NaNoWriMo. Really, I do. I love it so much that, even though October 31st is actually my birthday, every year that day is overtaken by last-minute planning, world-building, snack-gathering, and general pre-NaNo excitement. I like to think of the day as All NaNo’s Eve.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It takes place in November every year and involves its participants attempting to draft a 50,000 word novel over the course of the month. I say “draft” because that’s what you’ll have at the end of the month, even if you succeed (or “win” in Nano speak) — a first draft. It will be messy. There will be typos. In places, it will be downright awful. And that’s all part of the fun. NaNo is all about embracing the sh*tty first draft and just getting words down on paper.
Let me tell you a story. Back in November of 2015, I was between jobs and deep in the pit of depression — not that I really knew that last part at the time. I had graduated with a writing degree only a few years earlier, but I had never had the nerve to actually put myself out there as a writer. I had some free time, and one day I Googled “writing challenges” just to see what came up. It turned out that I was four days into something called NaNoWriMo.
I thought about it for a while. I was always more of a non-fiction writer than a…
