Throughout November, I took part in NaNoWriMo, marking my sixth or seventh try at the challenge to write 50,000 words in thirty days. For this year, I decided to work on a stand alone novel tentatively titled The Harbinger. The story idea originally came to me earlier this year when I had a nightmare before a scheduled surgery. In that nightmare, I died from complications during surgery and then had to argue with an agent of death to let me return to the world of the living.
From this nightmare, I crafted an idea about a young teen who is mistakenly killed when another is slated to die due to someone’s interference. They are taken by a Harbinger and must travel the realm of death to fix the mistake. I had quite a bit planned plot-wise for this story, though my strong start fizzled out.
Roughly after a week, I wanted to give up. I was so far behind, I couldn’t see any way of making it through. It seemed like a chore to write every day and I didn’t like what I was putting on the page. I spoke with my boyfriend and told him I was thinking of quitting NaNo after not meeting the word count for a few days. After talking, where he reminded me why I write in the first place, I said I’d stop for the day and try again tomorrow. And, I’m glad I listened to him instead of quitting altogether.
Though I did not meet the expected 1,667 words per day, I managed to catch up on the weekends. My daily word count was all over the place, from 40 words to over 4,000, but I kept moving forward, kept typing. And I managed to complete the 50,000 word challenge for November.
Glad to have it done and looking forward to editing my story in a month or so. But it was so overwhelming along with everything we had happening in 2020. Though, thankfully I don’t feel the burnout as badly as last year.
Did you partake in NaNoWriMo? How’d it go? No matter what happened, any amount of writing is better than none at all.
Until next time, happy writing!
Kaylen Azalea Grimm 