A Reflection on Failing NaNoWriMo

and what's ahead in 2024

If you’ve been reading my newsletter since the end of October, you may be aware that I undertook a somewhat overly-ambitious project in November: I set a goal of writing 50,000 words and after almost three weeks had to admit that that was not remotely possible. 

November is now over— extremely over! It’s January!-- and I am embarrassed to even share the small number of words that are currently filling my manuscript, so I won’t. This is my Substack and I can share exactly as much as I wish to. 

So I shall just say that I didn’t come close to reaching my goal. I failed NaNoWriMo in 2023, and I’m perfectly fine with that.

When I was in middle school and early high school, I read almost every book in the Cherry Ames series by Helen Wells and Julie Tatham. If you aren’t familiar with Cherry Ames, she was like Nancy Drew but better– amateur detective, beautiful and charming, just the right blend of awkward and sophisticated, the original quirky girl (long before Zooey Deschanel was even born). Oh, and she was a white-capped nurse performing heroic deeds of healing in hospitals and cruise ships and World War II fighter planes (!) while of course solving mysteries and dating a long string of handsome men. Cherry made nursing seem glamorous and exciting, and my impressionable preteen self decided that I would simply have to be a nurse.

I talked through ninth and tenth grade about applying to nursing school, and my parents suggested I sign up to volunteer at our local hospital. I could get a feel for the job, they said, and decide if this was something I really wanted to do.

With all the blissful wisdom that comes with the unparalleled maturity of sixteen entire years, I felt this was a mere silly formality and might at best serve to help me narrow down my options as to which kind of nurse I would be. And so I spent a year fetching warm blankets, wheeling blood pressure machines, folding gowns, organizing colored wristbands, and smelling smells I did not relish in Outpatient Surgery. I developed a healthy respect for nurses, an ability to spell the word “paracentesis,” a community service checkmark on my high school transcript, and a determination that nursing was not for me.

But I had to try it out to know that.

Well, I had to try out an unpaid, four-hour-shift, appropriate-for-an-untrained-teenager version that mainly consisted of carrying things from one spot to another, but I saw, heard, and inhaled enough to conclude the hospital floor was not for me. I am not meant to be Florence Nightingale. Nor was I born to conquer the great outdoors, or perform upon the stage, or run for public office. I am a couch or desk cubicle pet, and my habitat is artificially lit, high on words and papers and low on bodily fluids, and usually involves the clacking of a keyboard.

So when I clacked my keyboard into November with the fine strong aim to write myself a novel, I felt I was in a familiar environment. Writing is my passion! Writing is my life! Writing is what I was born to do! 

Except that, much as I had no specific inclination to assist with the draining of unwelcome fluid I from abdominal cavities (noble and necessary as this pursuit may be) I found that the story I thought I wanted to tell eluded me. I had a premise and a threadbare plot, but my book had no bones (nor any abdominal cavity) and I could not make it live on willpower alone.

I haven’t given up fiction entirely in the way I bid farewell to an RN certification, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it just isn’t what I want to be doing right now. And I had to try it out, and come to a sort of skittering, fewer-and-fewer-words halt in order to realize that.

So I’m not cloaking my NaNoWriMo 2023 in euphemistic language about how it’s really the journey that matters or that what I accomplished was learning about where my story wouldn’t go. I failed. That’s okay. Acknowledging that fact is oddly liberating.

Maybe that's how I ought to look at 2024: feeling the freedom to fail. Because when perfectionism lets go of the reins, you can discover that your life doesn’t fall apart when you try something and it doesn’t work out. It’s okay to make an attempt and walk away with no prize.

So much uncharted territory lies before me in this new year: going back to school for the first time since having a second child, increasing my freelance efforts, taking a road trip as the solo adult with a baby (fingers crossed that one works out). And if I decide I’m not afraid to fail (within reason of course…), who knows what could happen?

I said this to myself today as I sent an article pitch to a publication I probably have no business trying to get into. (That’s a humdinger of a poorly constructed sentence, isn’t it?) I said it as I wrote an outline of what I’d like to do on Substack this year (stay tuned). I said it as I resolved to at least cut down on my parenthetical statements, even if I’m never able to eliminate them entirely. I will do my best and let go of the rest.

Cherry Ames would, I think, be proud.

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I had another humor piece published as 2023 wrapped up! 

Classic Picture Books Streamlined For the Busy Parent in Frazzled

Going forward, I will no longer be linking to Medium-hosted articles in Substack, because Medium’s new policy for free reads has gotten a lot trickier for anyone who isn’t paying the subscription fee (a valid choice!). Instead, I will be reprinting my outside work here on Substack and providing links that-a-way. It also seems to be that the difference between Substack and Medium, how each platform works, what is included in a free account and what it means to “subscribe” to someone’s writing has been somewhat confusing for some of my acquaintance (I agree!) so i will be putting together a little explanatory guide as well. Stay tuned.

If you live in a part of the world that got snow this weekend (as I did!), please enjoy it, and if you have small children who insist upon DOING IT MINESELF, please keep a watchful eye upon them at mealtimes.