11:45 p.m. - 2004-11-30
Novelist Cubed
Jesus Mary and Joseph, how has it been six weeks since I updated? I suck beyond the telling.
But! I have not been idle with my time in these long, Things and Stuffless weeks. Not I.
Yeah, I know, it's kind of a smurfy design this year. But the accomplishment behind it remains the same: I am now a three-time NaNoWriMo winner! Yay me!
This year was quite a different experience for me. For one thing, it was my second year as Municipal Liaison, which meant I felt like I should at least appear to have a clue what I was doing. For another, this is the first year of NaNo where I've also been working full time in November. Two years ago, I was a student and had a part time job, and it's a lot easier to let school work slide to find extra writing hours in the day than it is to just...skip work. So I had to juggle a much busier schedule, especially with the major choir committments I had mid month.
Last year, I was unemployed during NaNo which led to more time but far, far less motivation. This year I had less trouble with the motivation - I never actually fell behind the word count quota, for the first time ever - but I feel like my novel this year is not as good as last year's. Maybe when I have a little perspective my opinion will change, but I spent a lot of this year's novel pining for last year's characters. My two main characters last year were so great that I don't know if I'll ever live up to them. Maybe I'll just write about them next year.
My characters this year picked up a lot of steam, though, so maybe they have more potential than I'm giving them credit for. The great challenge now, of course, is not to abandon my novel just because November is over. We'll see how that goes!
Despite the fact that I don't like the end result quite as much, I'm really proud of this year's NaNo. Mostly, though, I'm proud of the job I did as ML - we had incredibly good meetings with unbelieveable attendance, and very nearly 30% of Edmonton writers finished their novel. That is a pretty damn good number if you ask me, and I like to think the very active and welcoming and encouraging forums and meetings had a lot to do with that.
I met a lot of cool people in Edmonton doing this, which is something I'm finding harder and harder to do now that I'm out of university. It's amazing the cross section of people you get at an event like this, and it's a really neat way to get a slice of life from a different perspective.
So now, I find myself with a slightly lighter schedule, which is quickly filling up with holiday activities and extra work. I'm going to miss NaNo, though. I always do. I like the craziness that surrounds November. I like the write-ins, where everyone else around us thinks we're a bunch of maniacs. I like the social events, where we all discover things in common and talk about writing without fear of being labelled a geek, because we're all already wearing that label. I like the moments when I realise I've just written a really great scene, or a particularly funny line. I love it when my own dialogue makes me laugh, even though I know it's really lame.
So as the clock ticks away the last moments of November, I am proud to once again call myself a Novelist. And already, I'm starting to think about next year.
