Determination by Roxanne Piskel

If there’s one thing that I took away from participating in NaNoWriMo 2010, it’s that I can overcome any obstacle when it comes to my writing.

I faced numerous challenges last year. I didn’t have a computer or internet at home, so all of my writing was done during my lunch breaks at work. I came down with bronchitis, which resulted in me falling 10,000 words behind schedule.

And, of course, I wasn’t in a situation where I could put my life on hold. I had to continue to show up for my 40-hour workweek, take care of my four-year-old son, and do all those other domestic duties to keep life running smoothly.

Suffice to say, life really got in the way.

But I pushed through. When I found the time, I wrote. When I noticed myself falling behind schedule, I didn’t beat myself up about it. I just pushed myself to write more words the next time so I could catch up.

Some days, I didn’t like a single word I wrote. But I pushed on. Once, I deleted an entire section of the story because I was so unhappy with it. But I pushed on. I pushed myself harder than I’ve probably ever pushed myself towards a goal.

I was determined to reach that 50,000 word goal.

And, I did it.

Somehow, by the afternoon of November 30, 2010, I wrote a 50,007 novel. And when I submitted it to the NaNoWriMo site? I felt like I had really accomplished something incredible.

And I’m going to do it again.

I’m sure I’ll face a lot of struggles this year. I have a computer at home now, an old desktop handed down from my grandmother who doesn’t need it anymore. I still don’t have internet, but I really think that would be a distraction from the writing. I’m a fully single mom this year, so most of my writing will done in the late evenings after my son has gone to bed. I might get sick again.

But I did it last year.

I can do it all again.

And it’s going to be fantastic.

Roxanne is a single mother to a 5-year-old superhero, living in the biggest little city and blogging all about her journey at Unintentionally Brilliant. Besides being a mother, an administrative assistant, and a blogger, Roxanne is also a freelance editor. Her background in editing includes working on the Sierra Nevada College literary review, editing term papers throughout college, and being nit-picky about her family's Facebook statuses. She also recently edited the e-book short story Requiring of Care, published on Smashwords by Cameron D. Garriepy. NaNoWriMo '11 will be the second year in a row that she's participated in the event. When not fully immersed in the literary and blogging worlds, she enjoys walking on curbs like they are tightropes, flying with her jacket stretched out like wings, and watching every superhero movie ever made at least twenty times in a row.

How I Published My Novel by Rachel Tsoumbakos

(Image source: volusion ecommerce)

Three years ago, I came across a book in my local library: ‘No Plot? No Problem.’ Little did I know it, but my NaNoWriMo journey had started.

That first year I signed up to the National Novel Writing website with excitement - after all, I was about to write a best seller. In a month’s time people would be banging down the door to publish it. I picked a username and a profile picture and then I got scared. I had a novel idea plotted out. What I was worried about, however, was the finish line. Not the thirty day deadline, but the end of my novel.

You see, I am pretty good at starting novels, but had never finished one. Ever.

So that first year came and went without a word being written. Every day I checked in and read about everyone else’s progress. Each day I became more disgusted with myself. Next year would be different, I told myself.

A whole year went by. I didn’t really think about NaNoWriMo until the following October when I borrowed that same book from the same library for a second time. I tried a slightly different approach this year though - I jumped blindly over the edge of October and hit the ground of November 1^st running.

I had no plot. I also had a major dancing competition in December. There was little time to spare. Having just finished reading ‘Twilight,’ I decided vampires would be my genre; after all, everyone was writing about them. I announced on Facebook that I was writing a novel in a month. And guess what? There was no choice but to finish it now.

With the threat of public humiliation, I actually finished the novel three days early. I also came second in Australia for my dancing level.

The second year was easier. I had a plan for the storyline growing. It had been blossoming in my head for several months. I wanted to see what would happen when I had both a plot and motivation (read: public humiliation again via Facebook).

What happened was magic.

The first day I sat down and poured my heart out onto my keyboard. I wrote for twenty five days straight. Some days only amassing 500 words, and others over 3,000. On the twenty sixth day, I started to wonder if this story would ever get finished. I had hit 50,000 words early and there was no finish line in sight. Worry set in. Not only do I believe you should reach the word count quota, but the story should also have a beginning, middle, and end.

What did I do? I set up a song list on my media player filled with both inspiring (think Amazing by George Michael) as well as scary (Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nail singing Like a Virgin) and wrote over 5,000 words in one sitting.

So, my story got finished - then what?

I gave myself a month off before editing. Along the way I started to send out feelers on Facebook. Other authors were doing the same thing. I entered my manuscript in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (ABNA). More discussion ensued there. Along the way, I got dropped from ABNA on the first round, but made a random comment on a Facebook friend’s page about how I was interested in self-publishing. That comment received another from a woman called Alison De Luca who was signed with Fantasy Island Book Publishing. She suggested that I submit my manuscript to her publishing house.

Fantasy Island Book Publishing is a new form of publishing. You could call it co-operative publishing. Each author can involve themselves as little or as much in the whole publishing process. If you have no idea how to design a cover, then someone else will step in and help out. If you want to give book trailer videos a go, then great. It is an individual process. Personally, it has given me a greater satisfaction than if I had just handed over my manuscript to a bigger publisher and therefore ending my creative input there.

The rest, as they so often say in the movies, is history!

Now tell me your stories! Ever published your NaNo novel? Ever tried to? What are your plans after the finish line? If I can do this, you can too!!!

Rachel was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1974. She has worked in several different areas including hairdressing and banking. Currently she is a stay home mother of two. Besides writing, she enjoys living a sustainable lifestyle by growing edible plants and raising chickens in her suburban backyard. Emeline and the Mutants is her first novel, and she is currently editing her new work, Indiana Meets A Vampire.

Rachel is active on Twitter (@mrszoomby), and you can find her on Facebook. Her main character, Emeline Hart also has a Facebook following. Rachel can also be found on Google+. Her NaNoWriMo username is barefootgardener. 

Temporary Writing Insanity by Maureen Hovermale

(Source: LOLcats)

I sat in front of the confirmation email wondering if my sinus medication was out-of-date. What would make me want to sign up for this 50,000 word-count one-month torture gig? This is my first year at Nanowrimo and I’m not prone to masochistic behavior yet here I am: Gearing up for the write of my life.

There it was in my inbox in black and white with a cheerful little message telling me the ins and outs of what I could expect with links to help pages and encouragement. The prevailing thought in my head at the time was that I’ve done a lot of things for a t-shirt better left in my past, but I’d thought I’d grown out of that phase.

I started ticking off excuses: I’m not particularly technologically adept; the Internet and I often having a wary stand-off with my keyboard left punch-drunk from my forceful reattempts at entering something I just know should work. I don’t even know the program. Looking further into it, I realized the ‘program’ was a straight-forward editor that looked and felt like using any other of the sort, so that argument was lost.

My work as a writer is more than often solitary. What in the world would make me go full-out and enter a massive project with countless strangers like this? I’ve collaborated before and really, if I didn’t want to this time, I didn’t have to. Sure there were groups in my area that had help if I needed it, but if I didn’t want to, nobody was forcing me.

Strike that excuse.

I bit my nails and tried another tack. Well there’s the time element. Thanksgiving is in November and I’ve tons to do for the holidays and…

I really want to do this. I want to prove to myself, more than anybody else, that I can take this head-on and accomplish it. A sort of Mt. Everest writer-style high-fiving bragging right. Well, there went that. I was committed or should be committed, and exactly which one of the two, I wasn’t quite sure.

I’m determined to take it from the blank page onwards and not have one single word written for this before the clock strikes 12:01 a.m. November first. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. Would Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Sherpa have hopped on a helicopter to scale the mountain? No, it would have defeated the purpose.

While I’m still uncertain as to what my particular purpose in all of this is, I do know that I feel strongly about starting and finishing right, no matter the time obstacles or hair-pulling that will more than likely occur. Still, I can’t help but feel that perhaps I’m not up to the task and know that the way my schedule has been lately, that I’m really asking quite a bit of everyone around me to even consider doing this.

So many reasons that ultimately come down to the fact that I’m just getting the jitters. I know though, if I don’t do NaNoWriMo, I’m going to pay for it later in the woulda, coulda, shoulda department and I’ve learned a long time ago, that it just won’t do.

Here I go then. It’s decided and heaven help me, I’m going to reach that peak, snow-covered or not. Wish me luck and more back at you, if you’ve signed up too. We’re compatriots now and we’ll conquer this mountain come what may. If you need help, I’ll untangle my fingers from the keyboard and send you a line. 

Hopefully you can do the same for me if I get stuck on a ledge.


WHO'S WITH ME? Strike those excuses and hop on the NaNo train of fun. WriMos FTW!

(bad hair day for our lovely newbie)

Here’s what Maureen Hovermale (@zenchery) tells us about herself: I'm a writer and reviewer who tries to put everything I’ve got into everything I do, which means I fall from exhaustion with a book on my face quite often. I tried to keep this part of me a secret, but was exposed quickly by the tell-tale crease down the left side of my face after waking. I have a perpetual extra bump on my middle finger from writing and have discovered that a thesaurus is not a dinosaur. (I looked it up.) My OCDs are entering writing contests and folding sheets precisely into the ball they were meant to be.

Not Afraid to Fail by Tami Veldura

(source: everything technology marketing)

I have participated in the beast that is NaNoWriMo for six years straight. 

I haven't won even once.

I make a one month commitment every year for six years and I can't even say I've stuck to it for 30 days. I've either got the world's worst fear of commitment or I'm nuts, but either way I'm trying this thing again, and by Grabthor's Hammar, it will work this time. Right up until a friend of mine wants to hang out for an afternoon; then all bets are off.

When Chris Batty decided to get some friends together and write a stupid number of words in a stupidly short amount of time, he didn't actually think anyone would do it. He didn't really expect anyone to hit 50k. He thought he'd picked a number so unfathomably astronomical that the very thought of it would kick the inner editor out of the picture and allow creativity and progress to flow unimpeded. 

Then this thing took off like a pumpkin from a slingshot and thousands of people hit 50k words for years in a row. They developed techniques for hitting 50k (no contractions!) and debated the merits of pantsing vs. plotting. They built wordcount trackers and winners got digital badges of triumph. And somewhere along the way NaNoWriMo became about hitting 50k words in 30 days no matter what or you didn't win.

I've done NaNo for six years in a row, and I haven't won once.

But I have done NaNo for six years in a row and I have made life-long friends who are just as crazy about writing and character and grammar as I am.

I have done NaNo for six years and I have learned more about time management than any public school press of homework could ever hope to teach me.

I have done NaNo for six years and I have screamed myself so silly I've cried in a public coffee house with nine other WriMo’s during write-ins.

I have done NaNo for six years and I have found hidden depths of genuine emotion in paragraphs of otherwise bland exposition. It takes 10 thousand hours of practice, 10 thousand paintings, and 10 thousand words before the real writing shines.

I've done NaNo for six years and I have seen communities spring up (#1k1hr, #writeordie) with the single purpose of driving this creative force within us to show what we're made of.

I've done NaNo for six years and I've grown as a writer in leaps that my school teachers would be pressed to explain.

I've done NaNo for six years and I have broken every rule they've set down and I still haven't managed to win even once, but NaNoWriMo isn't about writing 50k words in 30 days. 

Not really. 

It's about coming together and celebrating the arts. It's about taking a challenge and running with it with all your heart, even when the world says no. It's about proving that the impossible can happen every single day. It's about not having to prove anything to anyone. It's about expanding your horizons, taking leaps of faith, trusting your gut, stepping out of the comfort zone, rushing headlong into battle, and never settling for less.

It's about Butt In Chair, Words On Paper.

It's about producing.

It's for the love of craft.

Happy writing!

What has NaNoWriMo taught YOU so far? Are you in it to win it or just to have fun?

Tami Veldura is a 24yr-old fresh from college with a BA in long form creative fiction. Her first short story: Closer Than Touch is coming out in January 2012. You can find her on twitter @tamiveldura and her website. And finally, you can also find her as tamiveldura on the NaNoWriMo site.