The secret to Nanowrimo

"If you're not making mistakes, it's a mistake." Miles Davis

Who doesn't like a quote that unfolds the mysteries of life for you? Just like SparkNotes. And who doesn't like pithy epigrams, like: You have to fail before you succeed.

Ultimately, these cheat sheets are not helpful. (Prepare yourself for the insightful comment.) As any first-year philosophy lecture on epistemology will tell you, you can know something without understanding it. In other words, knowledge is not enough. (Also, SparkNotes is notoriously unreliable, perhaps to trick you into failing?)

This year is my third year signing up for Nanowrimo - National Novel Writing Month. (The link is in a nifty list somewhere over here <---.) People from around the world sign up and create a profile. From the 1st to the 30th of November, you try to write 50 000 words, in other words (punnage), a novel.

Don't bother to work it out: to finish on time you have to write 1 667 words per day. If you can write 500 words in half an hour (which takes practice), that means one and a half hours out of your day. Most of us can barely find half an hour for lunch, so this hour and a half is mythical.

Except, that depends: how badly do you want to be a writer? If not very or you're still thinking about it, give it a try. The experience is a good way to find out what your priorities are and how to manage your time. But you won't make it more than a week.

If your answer is a fire in your chest, then let me tell you about Years 1 and 2 before I tell you about 3 (although, really, the whole story's over there -----> in two nifty buttons above my reading lists).

In Year 1, I made it a week. By then I was something like 10 000 words below target and I hated the wretched piece of writing and I was so tired I swear my eyeballs were sagging. In Year 2, I made it three days. I started writing something very intelligent about illusion and hope and belief, and ended up with something that sounded like Twilight where the vampire's just some mute emo kid.

Granted, I later wove the first page of the aborted novel into my real novel.

Year 3 and I'm on target! (Ok, that's a bit of a lie: I went out last night instead of writing but plan to - will - make it up today.) I want this. So badly it burns like fire in my chest. I will wake up early, go to sleep late; I will not sleep for the last 72 hours and take leave; I will finish this year and, damn it, I will finish my real novel before my 30th birthday (in three months).

But I could not make it if I had not failed twice. In failing, I learnt how fast your motivation drops as soon as you fall a bit behind, that you cannot achieve something like this (without self-destructing) if you cannot sort out the rest of your life, and that I am first and foremost a writer, not a publisher.

I dreamt of being a writer when I was still a 'lightie' (also a ballerina, marine biologist and archaeologist). After an(other) aborted attempt at becoming a graphic designer, I realised that books were It. So I studied language, media and literature and became an editor, a copywriter and a publisher.

In the last year, almost every dream I have nurtured has unfolded: a home I love, a career, a growing zoo, friends, a sense of calm and perspective. There are two left: buying my home and finishing my novel. And I intend to accomplish the second one first.