Bowing out for this year

I chose not to write yesterday. I also chose to not write again today.

I am not happy cramming writing like this. It feels like work.

I learned that it takes a huge amount of preparation to write a story in a month at this kind of pace. Character development. Key scenes. I was not prepared enough and had not developed my free writing skill to the extent needed to keep going. I wasn’t happy writing meaningless text and dialogue that I wasn’t sure would for a logical plot.

I take 18 weeks to train for a marathon when I commit. I wouldn’t ever show up on the day of a marathon without putting in that training. I think that’s what I did with this writing marathon and it hurt.

I wasn’t happy working long days then hiding out in a room by myself to struggle with writing. I wasn’t happy giving up running and spending time with my wife to write.

I’ve decided I need to re-evaluate how writing fits into my life right now. I get great satisfaction when I read my writing most of the time. I have received plenty of compliments on my writing style.

I also know that I truly enjoy writing non-fictional pieces, like my opinions, my experiences and my lessons from other people. I want to find a way to writing these types of pieces more frequently.

For now, I will not push to finish NaNoWriMo. It was a hard decision to make. I set this goal, and for now I will not achieve it.

However, I am proud that I wrote 8,000 words in six days. I will consider trying another year, and be extremely proud that my writing has progressed so dramatically this year. I am also proud of my courage to give it a shot.

See more progress on: Do NaNoWriMo