Assignment #6 - Wes Davis - Your Little Writer

My fingers ached with anticipation and dread. The night was November 29th, one day before it would all be over. The poor Google Docs document could barely keep up with the words spilling across the screen. Curtailing my allotted five minute breaks, I continued to write and write and write. The serene orchestral music was nothing but a dull thrum to my ear as my senses zoned in on the one task at hand. Finish the chapter. Finish the draft. Reach fifty-thousand words.

NaNoWriMo was the contest I was participating in. Every November, writers across the nation scrambled to write a whole novel, or at least 50 thousand words, in one month. I, yearning for a challenge and accomplishment, earnestly created an account and plotted tens of pages of character notes, plots, subplots, and synopses. That fateful Halloween night, when the screams of young children in little-Frankenstein's monsters and little vampires had ceased to ring in the streets, when the clock finally struck midnight, I began to write. I wrote and wrote and didn't stop. I would write until my fingers ached and my eyes burned because it's all I could do.

Flash forward to the day after Thanksgiving break. I'm sitting in eighth-grade English, my lovely teacher asking us students to discuss amongst ourselves how we spent our fall breaks. After breaking the news with my table mates, the teacher decided to ask me how I spent the break.

"I wrote 25 thousand words." The cocky smile that was plastered across my acne-ridden face couldn't be contained. I wasn't lying, though. I had been behind on my goal leading up to the break, and with every waking moment off school I decided it would be spent at the computer, typing away the lives of characters who now felt far too real to be fiction. I was 30 thousand words into my story and was feeling accomplished, but the dread of 20 thousand remaining words still loomed. My work would never be enough if I couldn't win.

Flash forward to the 29th. My mind years for sleep as the hysteria-induced click of the clock on my computer screen drilled into my brain. Nothing would come. The English language was foreign and so were the characters I had devoted the month for. Only 12 thousand words left. So close, yet so far. I knew I wouldn't finish that night. But every fiber of my being wanted it, I wanted to claim my winner certificate and all the goodies the NaNoWriMo team promised. I only wrote 7 thousand words that night.

~

I didn't end up winning, but I did finish the novel at a later date. Now, it sits deep in the writing folder on my laptop, never to be touched again. That trash pile couldn't be saved no matter how much I would want to. Even though I didn't win, I learned so much about perseverance and about how much it takes to not only start a book, but to finish it. That measly 53 thousand word, 174 page draft was more work than I had ever done in my whole life up to that point. My writing improved tremendously throughout the course of that month and it showcased to me how crucial practice is to developing one's craft. It also proved to me how beautiful language is. One can't truly appreciate the beauty of their (or someone else's) craft until they live and breathe it. It was only then when I really saw what it meant to be a writer. It was an insane month, but I can't recommend the challenge enough. Challenge yourself, no matter what your craft is.

Oh, and for anyone curious, I won the year after ;)