I was particularly excited for NaNoWriMo last year. I had recently moved, and in this time of transition from hectic city life to the quiet green of my hometown, I decided that I would dedicate myself to writing full time. I knew that attempting the NaNoWriMo hurdle once more, and this time finally winning, would be a great way to catapult myself to official authorship.
While I mentally mapped my noveling adventure I also visited doctors' offices throughout September and October. Whenever a needle appeared I focused on the details of the bookstore where I imagined my main character working, and as a series of cold hands checked my throat, I plotted a potential meet-cute.
Halfway through October I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
It felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me, and my hopes of obtaining my NaNoWriMo winner status went with it when they scheduled my thyroidectomy for mid-November.
It would have been all too easy to say to myself, “That’s ok, if there was a ever a reason to not participate in NaNoWriMo, this would be it.”
But as November approached I made the decision that cancer would not be the thing that kept me from winning. This insane, out of my control thing was not going to be enough to stop me.
I began the month with "No Plot, No Problem" which encouraged me to lean into imperfection, to remove my inner editor, and I chose novelizing socks in lieu of a novelizing hat.
Then I racked up as many words as I could before November 14th, knowing that once I had my surgery that I wouldn't be writing for a while. “A while” turned out to be five days. Five days that my body and mind were too tired and fragile to do anything more than recover, much less put words on the page.
But when I returned to the keyboard I realized that I was going to win NaNoWriMo both in spite of having cancer, and because I had cancer.
I treated my cancer like a villain, a villain who plotted to diminish my abilities, but instead I rose up to show him that I would get my fifty thousand words regardless of his evil machinations.
Beyond the spiteful determination, the experience taught me something unexpected. I learned that I was the biggest hindrance in my attempts at winning in the past.
Excuses about lack of time, or bad ideas were just roadblocks of fear that I was happy to accept. Once there was something greater to fear than the fear of failure, I got out of my own way and leaned into the wild and uncertain adventure that is NaNoWriMo.
It shouldn’t require finding a greater, more tangible fear than the fear of failure to remove the roadblocks you set up for yourself. Know that you are capable of doing the work even if not all of the work is solid gold.
Those fifty thousand words I wrote? Maybe half of them are worthy of being carried over to the next version of the manuscript. There are characters who need to be eliminated and world rules to be changed, but none of that diminishes the work I did.
You will never have a perfect first draft.
You can always find reasons to not do the work, not take the chance, not lean into the inevitable mess that is a first draft.
But when you do lean in to it, you’ll be practising becoming a better writer, you’ll meet characters who do unexpected things, and you’ll have a sense of accomplishment that you were brave enough to write when so many are too afraid to try.
Casey Rose Frank is a freelance copywriter in Liverpool, NY. She writes Flash Fiction and Poetry as well as continuing to brave a new novel every November. You can learn more about her work by following her on Twitter @CaseyRoseFrank
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