Where to Begin... Again.

It’s almost March and I have barely touched my novel having gotten back into the swing of training on the bike and pouring my time into other endeavors such as starting a YouTube channel, Jooi Ride, and exploring my ad-hoc decision to sign up for a CSA box and challenge myself to cook all the fresh produce I receive every week.

Somehow I find my ability to buckle down and write at the end of the day hard when attempting to balance physical therapy, 12+ hours of training a week, commuting two hours a day, and a full-time job. What little time is left is spent on cooking, cleaning, and all finally, reading and relaxing.

To spend my last hour or so of the day sitting in front of a computer screen is somehow undesirable despite the fact I can feel full of ideas before crawling into bed in an oversized t-shirt and mismatched pajama pants. I know from NaNoWriMo that writing before bed sends me into a spiral of crazy dreams, nightmares, and wild thoughts that would be great for a book but are ultimately terrible for a good night's rest.

So how to strike a balance? Perhaps this means prepping all my food on Sunday and studiously writing for one hour a day for the next three months. Or perhaps it means one or two crazy nights of writing a week.

Either way, it’s time to set some deadlines. So, here I sit on my bed, adorned in a men’s t-shirt and sweatpants I’ve probably been wearing for a day too long and declare this first draft will be done by the time NaNoWriMo rolls around again!

A Love Letter to NaNoWriMo 2019

Over July Fourth weekend I had gone out into the mountains that surround the beautiful Bishop, CA to train for an upcoming stage race called the Everest Challenge Stage Race. I was overly ambitious, pr perhaps just stupid and I, of course, came back from a wonderful weekend completely spend and completely injured.

It wasn’t until being off the bike and in physical therapy that I had a crazy idea pop into my head. I have always loved fantasy as a genre of fiction. Ever since I was a child I would greedily devour books beneath my bedsheets with a reading light (yes, those old antiquated things), making sure to click it off if I heard a parent coming towards my room who might tell me I ought to go to sleep because it was way past my bedtime.

As an adult, the bad habit persists and I often find myself fighting against all reason, to stay awake to finish one last chapter. As my consumption of fantasy novels grew, I found myself wondering if I too could write a book. Could I create a world that would be so engaging that readers would be using all manners of tactics to keep their eyes from closing just to finish the book?

I wasn’t sure and the thought itself was daunting. How was it that a whole novel could be spun so brilliantly from nothing but pure imagination? And so, the thought ruminated and became a dull nagging at the back of my conscience. But on October 1st, I was procrastinating making dinner and decided to go for a walk. As I pick my way down the uneven sidewalk scattered with sticky berries, an entire story arc seemingly downloaded into my brain. And it kept coming.

That night, I sat down for an hour and banged out 6,000 words. The story was so exciting it needed to come out onto the page. My fingers ached with tendonitis but it didn’t matter, it needed to come out! But then real life got in the way. Work, and stress, and disappointment over still being injured became a reality. My idea took the back burner.

One night on my devilishly long commute through LA traffic, I phoned a longtime friend in Boston who enlightened me about NaNoWriMo. No, it was not the name for a deadly strain of bacteria or virus, it was an acronym that stood for National Novel Writing Month. It was November after all, the month of NaNoWriMo, and she said I should sign up. What did I have to lose? So I did. The official goal was 50,000 words in the month of November and I was less than 30,000 words into my novel. I could use the remaining two weeks as motivation, right?

I flew back to my home state of NY for Thanksgiving and found myself wrapped up in writing while waiting for my delayed flight, somehow tuning out the man next to me who decided to take out his second laptop and play reruns of Friends on full blast for the entire airport to hear, but not see. I wrote unsuccessfully between bites of turkey and stuffing. I wrote somewhat successfully alone one chilly, yet snowless morning in the suburbs of NY. And in the eleventh hour, on the last day of NaNoWriMo, I somehow banged out 4,500 words and hit the 50,000 goal mark!

It was wild. I felt this relief, this sense of accomplishment, and a huge part of me wanted to brag about it. I hit 50,000 words. Hell, my poor grammar made me actually make it to 50,104 words. I was an overachiever and now all of Instagram knew! But despite the elation, I also felt a hollowness. NaNoWriMo was over, yet my manuscript was not yet complete. How would I find the fire to continue when it was back to the grind as usual?

But no, I thought. NaNoWriMo isn’t just a challenge. It is a way of setting good writing habits. A way to make you sit down and stare at a blank, harsh, digital piece of paper with the little blinking cursor damning your to a dark, terrible hell until you write something. Anything.

And so I will. I will continue to write. I will continue to finish my manuscript and then somehow find the gumption, tenacity, whatever you may call it, to polish it. And then I will reach out to you, to the wonderful writing community that I now know exists, to beta read my humble creation.

NaNoWriMo, thank you! May there be many more.