Dear Losers of NaNoWriMo,

I use that term loosely because I don’t think you’re losers at all.

I have a love/hate relationship with National Novel Writer’s Month. I love the community that NaNoWriMo fosters. Writers are very isolated creatures. We need a space to call home and a tribe that understands us. I would say we need that more than we need oxygen. It’s hard to explain to your spouse why you’re up at three in the morning banging your head against the wall because you forgot that awesome paragraph you just wrote in your head but now with pen and paper in hand, it’s gone. The community that NaNoWriMo attempts to foster on and offline is worth its weight in gold. I applaud that.

Then, there’s the other side, the idea of winning if you can write 50,000 words in a month. From concept to actual words on a page, I would say it’s taken me almost a year to write my current novel, with six months to actually get to 50,000 words. Writing 50,000 words is hard. Unless you get all Jack Torrance and write “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” 5,000 times (you can thank Stephen King for that idea), it’s not going to happen in 30 days for an amateur writer. Most professional writers that I’ve researched take about three months to write the first draft and you’re beating yourself up about not finishing 50k in 30 days, so don’t.

Blood, sweat, tears and tantrums went into every single one of my 50,000 words. There were days I didn’t write at all, sometimes even weeks would go by and not a word was typed but it was always on my mind. That sense of failure because I wasn’t in front of a keyboard typing, something, anything. That was when I would remember what my mentor at Yale taught me about writing and the writing process. It is a process. You’re not going to be able to sit down and write every single day, life happens.  Nor should you only write and/or think about your novel when the muse strikes you. On the days when you can’t write a single word, think about your characters, read novels that are in your genre, work on your outline but always have your story on your mind. Who knows where your next idea might come from so always be open. How are you supposed to work through this process when you’re mentally under the gun to write 50,000 words in 30 days?

Have I ever completed NaNoWriMo? That answer would be a big fat no. I signed up both this year and last but never did anything with it. Last year, it was because I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and it was just a bad season for me. I could barely get out of bed, the thought of writing one word let alone 50,000 would have been mentally debilitating and I was already in a bad way. This year, I felt it was cheating to use a work already in progress and almost at 50,000 words anyway. I could have started my second work but I just wasn’t mentally ready to start it, I needed to finish my current project first. That said, I don’t think I would have done it anyway because I just don’t feel like you can write 50,000 words in 30 days and not have half of it wind up thrown out. Thirty days isn’t enough time to be creative and go through the process and better yet, enjoy the process of bringing your world to the page.

Now, before you all get on me for saying that all the people who won NaNoWriMo are bad writers, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m sure Stephen King farts 50,000 words and every single one of them is amazing. Unfortunately, we all aren’t Stephen King. What I’m saying is this, we as writers beat ourselves up enough. It shouldn’t matter if it takes 30 days or 10 years as long as you get it out. It would be a shame to discourage someone who has beauty in them. 50,000 imaginative, glorious, wonderful words just waiting to leap onto the page only to get discouraged when they couldn’t get them out in 30 days. Imagine what the world would have missed if they stopped writing if you stop writing. So don’t stop writing.