Well, here we are. It’s December 1st and I am very happy to say that my first NaNoWriMo was a success. I went to the wire, but I was able to complete a 50,074 word story that is in first draft format.
I have to admit, it wasn’t easy for me to write this story. It forced me to revisit a lot of good and bad memories of my life from 1994 through to now. It forced me to do a lot of self-reflection and with that came a fair amount of emotion for the people and events that I experienced during those years be it with family, friends, or past girlfriends. I can say that in the end my outlook for most things is positive, but there are some areas that I am not optimistic about and I have no reason to believe they will ever improve. Despite that, I am at peace with where things are in my life and I am not going to let them affect me negatively.
As for the story itself, I am not sure what I am going to do with it. It’s only in first draft format, so once I edit it, the word count will grow, which almost always happens when I do my second drafts. Only once did I end up cutting out a bunch of material. It actually happened with my debut novel, The Condemned, after some feedback from Dana. I ended up removing the bulk of a chapter and merging it with another. Otherwise, I generally end up adding more content. Because this is a non-fiction account of a portion of my life and family, I am not comfortable at this point to share it. I think the best thing for me to do is to sit on it for a while and go back to my other projects and then revisit this story at some other time to see if there is something there that I feel other people would want to read.
Doing NaNoWriMo as a challenge was challenging, pun intended. Working full-time with a family and finding time each day was sometimes hard. There were days where I was ahead, which allowed me to skip a day, but then there were some, like tonight, where I was behind a day or more. In the end, I am happy that I did this. It forced me to write story differently than I have before. I have not yet written a story in first person narration that wasn’t fiction. Also, I haven’t written many stories using first person narration in general. I am usually writing with omniscient narration, so forcing myself to do that was equally challenging and fun.
To all you other writers out there who participated in NaNoWriMo, I do I hope that you enjoyed the experience whether you completed it or not. To those who completed the challenge, congratulations. I am honored to be counted among you, especially after my first year.
Thanks for coming by to read my latest update. I look forward to sharing more with you soon on some of the other projects that I am working on. Until then, take care of yourselves.
Literally Jesse 