Tag: NaNoWriMo

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How Depression Set Me Back

I was in a car accident last year. I’ve been working through a lot of issues with anxiety, depression, and PTSD. I was having a hard time engaging in anything. When I dove into NaNoWriMo, that really helped provide a distraction and a purpose outside of my doctors’ appointments and moved my focus from what had happened to me to what was happening to the characters in my book. After NaNoWriMo, my husband and I were consumed by family functions, birthdays, and our anniversary until about mid-January.

After things calmed down, I should have jumped right back into writing like I had been in November, but I didn’t. I struggled intensely with depression and felt unmotivated to do anything. I worked, spent time with my family and best friend and ignored the rest of the world pretty much. I occasionally logged into Facebook and Twitter to see what my author friends were up to, but didn’t do much in the way of editing my book without the encouragement of my husband. He was really the one pushing me to open up my laptop and get through a chapter or two.

In the last two months I’ve become more active in the writer community again. I’m doing better emotionally and working through some of the issues that were holding me back. Writing is one of the very few things that truly makes me feel like I’m escaping. It transports me to a different place. I get consumed by the words as they show up on the screen. What better therapy could I ask for?

I may still be slow at getting back to the point I was in November, but I am working my way there! I’m going to keep surrounding myself with other writers and things that encourage me to push on. If you’re going through anything similar, feel free to reach out to me. Maybe we can help each other out!

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An Update…Finally

When I did my NaNoWriMo post, I had intentions of creating a follow up post in December. December came and went and I made the excuse in my head that I was too busy with family festivities. Then January came and went, then February, then March. You get the idea. So here I am, finally writing to update you on how NaNoWriMo went. It went great! I’ve never enjoyed myself more. I spent over 34 hours getting to my 50,000 word goal and those hours made me feel more alive than any other time. That deadline really brought out the excitement in me. I couldn’t wait to get home from my day job to sit down and write. I attended virtual write-ins and went to local write-ins as well. It was so exciting to connect with other authors. Even though we were all working on something different, we were connected by one common goal: complete 50,000 words in 30 days.

The author community is an amazing thing. We support each other, encourage each other, and provide advice. We technically are opponents in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn’t stop us from feeling the constant need to help each other out. I received a lot of encouragement throughout November and the encouragement continues. It really pushes me to write more, to write better. I’ve started going to a local writers’ group. I’ve expanded my network of writers and it just amazes me how good authors can be at providing criticism without being aggressive and mean.

I purchased Scrivener and am using it to organize my book. Wow! What an amazing tool! I definitely would recommend it. I let my book cool until February and came back to it with a fresh set of eyes. I’ve read through it once and revised a couple small issues and left comments for the sections that require larger edits. My next step is to take different sections with me to my writers’ group to ask for advice on how to move forward with them. Hey! Maybe I’ll even post it here for some advice!

I’m going to be adding a couple more posts to explain a little bit deeper why I had been pushing off creating an update post and why it’s taken me so long to get back into the swing of things. I want to keep my posts somewhat short so that my readers don’t feel bogged down by the sheer length of the post. Look out for that one soon.

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NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is only 2 days away! I just learned about this amazing crazy month about, well…a month ago! I decided not to cheat and use this as an opportunity to edit my current novel, but as a way to get a new idea down on paper. I’ve had this idea for a long time, but have not wanted to work on any other novel but my current piece that I decided to not the idea down and save it for after I’ve finished my first novel.

Once I found out the rules for National Novel Writing Month, writing a brand new, 50,000 word book from scratch opened the door wide for me to be able to get out my first “shitty draft” (to quote Anne Lamott) of this new idea while still keeping my first novel as my main focus. 50,000 words is extremely intimidating! EXTREMELY!

I did discover, in a dry run using a writing prompt, that it may be doable. I sat down with a timer, my writing prompt (thank you Reddit!), and my laptop. I set the timer for an hour and began! I was able to write 2,379 words in that hour!! I was shocked because when the timer went off, I was sure I had under 1,000. I had stopped so many times to think up the right word or the right way to continue that I knew I had wasted precious writing seconds. I guess I was wrong.

I wanted to experiment with an hour because I was recently in a car accident that caused a bad concussion and has limited my ability to be on my computer for long periods of time. I know that spending more than an 1-2 hours a day is unrealistic at this point so I wanted to see if I could come even close to the 50,000 mark on 30 days. Maybe I can! Maybe if I give myself a set schedule and stick to it, maybe, just maybe I can get out my first shitty draft of a new novel that will be ready to revisit in a few months for editing!

Participating in NaNoWriMo? Let me know in the comments or add me as a writing buddy on NaNoWriMo.org. My author name is rwfranklin. If I can do it, so can you! Let’s keep each other accountable and give each other the encouragement we need!

I think my notebook cover says it best: