NaNoWriMo Took Over My Brain

I look forward to NaNoWriMo every year and I try to participate even when I know I really don’t stand a chance of finishing it. I love it. It’s a lot of fun. I’m essentially a hermit but I love being a part of this. But there are consequences.

You may know how it is, either with this or some other passion, however small.

By October at the latest you’re trying to figure out just what you’ll do for NaNo. If you don’t have any ideas you start scrambling to get one nailed down and if you have more than one idea you start scrambling to decide which one to use. Then there’s the countdown, and once November starts, word count.

You write like crazy – even if you only get a chance to write a few minutes every other day that’s still writing like crazy when you can. You work on characters and plot points and conflict and narration and dialog and how do I get this thing written In ONE MONTH.

At first it just enters your brain in the down moments, when work or life lets you think about. Oh sure, it’s there in the background, nudging at your forebrain every chance it gets. But you control it, you moderate it, you fight it and wrestle and struggle and only give in when the moment is right. In those moments you brainstorm and type, your fingers flying like the wind. Or if you’re like me your fingers fly like a gentle breeze that lightly stirs the autumn leaves. Whatever.

Eventually, though, those thoughts become more persistent and more frequent and just plain loud. Sure, you keep doing your work and going to the grocery store and doctor appointments and family gatherings. Except those other things, the non-NaNo things, start to get in the way.

Work? Auugh! Eat? OK, but fast! Why am I so tired? I can’t sleep now, I need to get more words out!

I can’t stop thinking about my plot. A new character just showed up and an old one just said something I didn’t know and I have to figure out how to get to the next chapter. What’s in the next chapter, anyway?

NaNoWriMo is not a month and it’s not an event and it’s more than a brilliant idea and a great concept that has done great things for humanity. NaNoWriMo is a way of life. For at least one month it takes over your brain.

I noticed it two weeks ago, just a few days in. I noticed it, but I don’t think I can do anything about it. I just have to learn how to live with it. And then I have to learn how to channel it into the rest of the year so that I keep writing, all year long, with a similar intensity (for relative values of intensity). There needs to be a balance between life and intense writing, but I need to let myself write more. That’s my goal for after November.

But for now, NaNoWriMo has taken over my brain.