Well, seeing as you haven't heard from me for over a month, you can bet it's safe to say that NaNoWriMo was a complete and utter failure. I got nowhere near the designated 50,000 words and got too wrapped up in other things to allow myself to care much. Am I disappointed in myself? Perhaps a little. I mean, when you think about it, it's not THAT hard to write that much in 30 days. One of my friends who participated surpassed the goal with a whopping 60,000-plus words. It's not like a marathon where you can only do it if you've trained for it. Anyone can sit down and write that much at any time they want to. So to not even get close to accomplishing such an achievable goal did do a bit of a number on my self-respect and confidence.
Although I know it wasn't because I COULDN'T write that much. It was because I chose not to. I chose to believe other things were more important. And if faced with that same decision today, I'd make it again. Some things are more important than NaNoWriMo. Another month, another year would have been better for me, would have had less life-altering changes to combat with. But that goes back to the whole premise of NaNoWriMo and the reason people do it in the first place. I learned that this year and I will try to keep that in perspective next year.
And in that respect, NaNoWriMo wasn't a failure at all. I am so glad I at least attempted it and stuck with it for two weeks. I learned so much about myself and my writing. I learned to pay attention to the tiniest details and to always keep the reader in mind. It got me really excited for the memoir, actually, though my actions may suggest otherwise. And though I rarely designated my writing as more important than other chores, I always deemed it significant enough to include in the schedule. I never thought to myself, "I shouldn't be writing" or "I shouldn't bother writing." In fact, I often thought, "I should be writing," or, "I WISH I was writing. " The fact that I want to write and want to make time for writing gives me hope that I will see this project through to the end.
Therefore, I have decided that January is going to be my makeup NaNoWriMo. I'm gonna get out the tens of thousands of words I didn't write in November and achieve enough words to be able to call myself a novelist. I feel like I can't begin to work on the editing and the fine-tuning of the novel until I get it all out on the page, and really, this being a memoir, I should get it all down before I find myself forgetting anything. So I'm excited to get that finished and follow through with what I should have completed a month ago.
However, I do have another distraction tempting me away from my own memoir. This holiday, when we were all gathered at my mother's, she handed me a finished copy of HER memoir about her mother's death. I've been dying to read it since I even knew such a thing existed, but I didn't want to bug her to finish it or to show me because that's something she had to figure out on her own and something I didn't want to feel rushed. But as part of our Christmas gift, she gave each my brother and me a copy. You should have seen the beaming smiles on our faces. I was so proud of her, and I think she was really proud of herself.
We had always talked about (perhaps only joked) about how I could edit it for her when she finally did finish it. But she didn't seem too keen on the idea now that it was written. "Oh, Jen, I think you'll be disappointed when you read it," she said.
"But let's just say I want to change some things..."
"I didn't write this for publishing," she said.
But I could barely help myself. Only reading the first page, completely oblivious to the conversation in the living room, I found myself making all kind of mental notes on how to make it better. Not saying that it was bad. Goodness, no, that's not the case. I haven't read it yet, but I know before looking that, between her and me, we could make that into something really fantastic. She's got the story and I've got the creative flair. And really, what more do you need to write a smashing book? Hell, some people on the Best Sellers list don't have either of those things.
Really, though, I'm excited to read it, to know more about my grandmother, my family, and heritage, myself. And maybe I'll find some answers to questions I'm having about my own book.
