The Finishing Point: NaNoWriMo 2014

So I finished my NaNoWriMo first draft on the 17th of November. It’s why I’ve been a little quiet. I’ve been trying to process exactly what that means to me. I wrote 95,000 words in 17 days. That’s a record for me. I completed an entire novel. It seems that when I’m given then time and the drive, I’m a pretty immersive creature and when I’m into a project, I’m all in, baby. All the way in.

Narrowing my focus and taking a weekend away from all of my distractions was probably the biggest push I needed. Through aching wrist and crying knees I reached 50k in 3 and a bit days. That was the fastest I’ve ever done it. I didn’t plan to finish so quick either. I was all about trying to pace myself, I didn’t even have anything ready for after…which proved to be a little harder than I thought. I really wanted to try and start and finish the third book in the Nexus Series but it seemed that my brain just isn’t ready to really think about that one. I’ll let it percolate in my brain for a while longer.

Let me tell you something though, writing, it’s my space where nothing bad happens; where I can escape from the world and be happy in this bubble I made. Nothing bad happens to me and I’m in charge of how the stories comes back, it’s not to be confused with being in charge of the story.

I write to escape, to forget about the pain that I’m feeling and have in my life. It’s a form of running, I know it and sometimes thing in it happen that I can’t control and it throws me for six but that’s when I know I need to keep going, keep pushing through that barrier because eventually things will come crumbling down.

As I was writing, I stumbled down a thought, it was about my dad, and I followed it. I was looking at some gorgeous pictures from my 21st and his joined 50th where we were laughing and he was being a clown. They are happy memories and I laughed so hard remembering those moments, but then the tears started. Out of nowhere I was crying because I miss him, I miss laughing at his stupid jokes, but I know that I keep running from that and that through my writing I’m still running but sometimes writing helps me wade through all of the muck of what’s happening and clears out so that I can sit around and actually feel, grieve. Ending a book is hard too, just like grieving because you have to part with a book for a while. You have to let it sit, germinate before you go back to visit it.

[Tweet “A story is done when you write those two words, “the end” and every time you rewrite it changes.”]

It moulds itself and shapes itself to something better than before, but it’s only when you let go and let the process take over that you learn how each version of the story differs and heals you.