The Nibo NaNo Breakthrough

I'm not one of those normal WriMos who worry and stress and have issues with wordcount and over-caffienation and lack of sleep. I never have been. As an English major in college, I learned how to type pretty fast. I could do a 3,000 word research paper in a matter of hours (if pre-researched) and have it twice-edited in that time. Hitting 1,667 words each day was not a sleep-threatening challenge. It was a goal and it was something that pushed me on to greater heights of writing. Heck, NaNoWriMo was what made me a writer. I hadn't really written creatively, ever, until that night (3 November, 2003) a friend asked me if I'd be doing NaNo with her. The rest, as they say, is history.

I like to read the forums and take part in the community of NaNo when I have time. I'm big into writing in pubs and coffee shops, both of which the city has in abundance. But I've never felt that lingering stress or anxiety to get in my wordcount. Usually, I wrote 2,000 each day and finished at least several days early. Last year, I finished on the 16th!

This year, I decided to raise the bar. If other people are having that kind of reactions to NaNo, obviously I was doing something wrong. It wasn't hard enough! I chose to write 100,000 words this month instead of the requisite 50,000. This is, of course, on top of ML duties and a 40-hour work week.

So you might be just as surprised as I was when I say that last night, walking through the back halls of my workplace, I suddenly had this attack of anxiety. I'm low on sleep, high on coffee, and over-sugared way more than I'm used to. I'm stressing over my wordcount and NaNo has become almost like a second job, taking hours upon hours out of my life in the evenings. I was even asking myself, "Why am I doing this to myself? What am I even doing?!"

IT WAS AWESOME!! I feel like a real WriMo! I've finally made it. Noveling Valhalla. Died and gone to Author Hell. It's bliss. I'm home.