Author’s Log: NaNoWriMo 2023 Retrospective

Well, this NaNoWriMo did not turn out how I thought it would.

For the first time during NaNoWriMo, my personal life was icky, to say the least. A week or two before NaNo, we lost my mom's cousin whom we were very close to unexpectedly, and then my dad's brother got sick and passed away a couple of days later. Honestly, this year has been the year of funerals for my family as we've also lost one of my other uncles, my aunt, and many older family friends. Losing my cousin and uncle so quickly and unexpectedly in succession was pretty much the tipping point for my mental health.

All the plans I had for my story were hard to go through, and then around the halfway mark of the word count goal, I started to hate my story. Like viscerally despise it. So I ended up shelving the project halfway through the month and spent the rest of the month journaling out my feelings during this time.

When it comes to my mental health, I think this was a good way for me to get out all of the feelings that I had during that time, but it didn't help me write a story. I mean, I found out what I don't want the story to be like, but I haven't figured out what I want it to be, which is the frustrating part.

I've never left NaNoWriMo with a semblance of a draft before and almost makes me feel like I failed in a sense, even though I hit my word count goal. But I'm trying to give myself some grace because it's been a pretty awful year, and I have to accept that there were so many things out of my control that led to this. Perhaps I could have done more prep beforehand, but that wouldn't have changed anything else that happened in November.

Now, do I wish that I completed this book last month? No, because it wasn't this book's time to shine. While I'm excited for these two characters to get together, their story isn't ready to be told yet, and I'm okay with that.

During the final days of 2023, I'm trying to focus my writing efforts on Project Belle, which is so close to having a finished first draft. I'm in a much better place right now, and it's such a sweet story that I only have the third act to finish, so I think it's feasible before the end of the year.

Instead of focusing on things I can't control, I'm going to try and do what I can to finish this year with a project that I've come to love.

Here's hoping for better things next year.

Ivey