NaNo Wri-what?

NaNo WriMo 2019 – Challenge Accepted

For the past couple years I’d heard about NaNoWrimo, but never really checked it out, oe to be honest, had a single clue what it was! Suddenly, my instagram was flooded in October 2019, September even, with preperation posts for this infamous writing event. Naturally, I checked it out, wanting in on all the excitement.

Whoa! 50,000 words written in the month of November? What the actual flying fritarta? I hadn’t written anything over 5,000 words in months. A short story here and there, and Delusion had been left untouched since the first part of the year with a measly six chapters. Curse of Salt was currently bouncing around in my head, so I was rough drafting snippets of scenes etc, and generally world building and gushing over new ideas.

I own and run my own business, which eats up a lot of my time, and smack bang in the middle of November, I knew I had four days away for an interstate work event. There was no way, no conceivable way, I could write 50,000 words in thirty days.

Challenge freaking accepted! I signed right up, and nominated to continue Delusion for my NaNoWriMo project.

Day one, so far so good. I smashed the daily word count, and for a while, I stayed strong. Then life caught up, and work!

The struggle was real, my friends! By the 14th, I was floundering and there were a four consecutive days while I was interstate for the work event, where I had a word count of zero. Six days total, I did not write a single word, and those days crushed me.

They say write the story you want to read, and working on Delusion again became everything to me in November. I’d wake up every morning with the drive to write, because I wanted to know what my characters were going to do next, where the story would take me within my rough outline.

Delusion grew, and grew, taking on more life than I guess I even realized was in me to breathe into it. Between Lucca, Avery, and myself, we did it. We reached the finish line of NaNoWrimo 2019 with blood, sweat, tears, laughter and a kissing scene which snuck in past my outline!

NaNoWriMo has been one wild ride, but I am so glad I challenged myself to sign up. Hitting those 50,000 words within thirty days was euphoric!

I have made so many new friends around the world through this amazing, supportive community of NaNo Writers, and discovered new authors and books out there! Considering we are all conversing and posting online, the positive vibe, the hype, it was palpable, incredible!

Delusion, I am now confident I will have published in 2020, having proven to myself, if I put the time aside, I can write a helluva-lota-words in a short space of time.

Bring on the editing process, and bring on whatever project NaNoWriMo 2020 will bring!

x Jessa

For more info on what NaNoWriMo is about, check out their official site!

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