Quitting NaNoWriMo, or why I started blogging
I know the official National Novel Writing Month organization sucks now; they said it’s ableist not to like AI. Writing a 50,000 word novel in a month has always been an insane thing to do.
Which is why I did it twice. 2013 and 2014, both while I was in high school. The second time I did it in a week. I wrote over 10,000 words one day.
The resulting novels both tried to tackle queer themes in sci-fi settings, but I think handled them with all the maturity you’d expect from a high schooler who hadn’t even come out yet. Also it’s been ten years and things have come so far for queer people, it’s not surprising that something from back then, though well intentioned, would be unreadable.
I’ve attempted the challenge again several times, not every year, but at least 6 times. Most of these times I didn’t write more than 5,000 words. One time I came close: 2021 I had over 40,000 words, but I had no idea where I was going with my story at all, so I didn’t finish it.
The novel I was working on this month also is about LGBT people; it’s poorly researched historical fiction set in 1940s San Francisco Chinatown. It probably won’t age well. I actually managed to wrap up most of the plot points I had outlined in just under 15,000 words, with plenty of time left in the month, so I consider that a success. I really have some pacing issues, but hey, a finished novella that I could maybe edit down into a short story is better than an unfinished novel. If I ever do the research to make it historically accurate, I might publish it here.
Anyway, I took a break from writing that story to stress-write other essays on November 5, 2024. No particular reason, yes I am American, why do you ask? I thought some of them were pretty decent, so I might as well publish them. I feel like I’m screaming into the void, but the screams have got to go somewhere, right?
I used to have a blog in high school. I still have the database dump from it. I managed to scavenge a couple of sonnets, but most of the writing made me cringe. Especially the post about the time I saw Kevin Spacey play Richard III and I loved it. At least it didn’t ruin Richard III for me; I can’t say the same about House of Cards. It was fun to watch along with him when he was just pretending to be evil; now I feel dirty for having ever liked him.
I also used to write/blog on Cohost, which was fun until it died. I might repost some of my old stuff from there on here, but I might just let it fade into obscurity. Not everything needs to last forever. Sometimes it's worth writing just for the journey.