NaNoWriMo: Winners and Winners

When winners are winners and losers are winners 

I was chuffed the past week to watch the #Nanowrimo hashtag on twitter. As people hit their 50K, and had their pieces verified, the relief was palpable. My favourites were the writers who were only a few hundred words away, and checking in on social media. They were soooo close, and when their perseverance paid off, it did my heart good to cheer with each of them. 

But what if the clock strikes midnight on Sunday, and you miss your goal? Are you consigned to the loser bin? 

Of course not!

Look, if you hit the 50K, you get the neat prizes that go with it – you get to call yourself a novelist, you get to buy a neat winner’s tee shirt, and you get your avatar changed to announce that you are awesome. But even if you didn’t hit the goal by the end of November, all of us, every single one of us, did an amazing thing this month. 

Those little snippets of ideas and stories and characters that may have been knocking about in our brains, or sketched onto scrap pieces of paper, or lost to time in files on our computer, they got aired out onto the page. Each one of us began the process of breathing life into these hidden worlds, and people. We all began moulding our characters from the aether, till they became these wonderful creatures with hopes, and goals, and foibles. They started grand adventures. They faced hardships. They overcame obstacles. They fell in love. They had their hearts broken. They lived. 

And you did that. You may have written 75,000 words this past month. You may have only managed 750. Doesn’t matter.  Because of you, a world that did not exist 30 days ago has now been brought into the light of day. And I bet you nearly anything that world, once blinked into existence, won’t go quietly back into that dusty notepad or forgotten desktop folder. That world will call to you, insisting that you finish its story. Those characters will beg you to take them on adventures. You may have been able to ignore a simple idea – you won’t be able to ignore your creation. 

For my part, I know I’ll miss the 50K. Unless I figure out a way to freeze time, or write 600 words a minute, it just won’t happen. And that’s okay! I’m proud of the words I’ve written, and more than that, I’m proud of the world I’ve created. What started as some words scribbled onto the back of a notepad as I sat in the Baker Street tube station after class – “International spy kid? Victorian London – chase through Tube opening ceremony. Bomb? Lasers? Jumping over steam stack?” – became a world that keeps me up at night thinking about it. I’m excited to write about these people, and their adventures. One day, I hope to be equally excited to share them with all of you. 

If you won, enjoy your amazing and well deserved victory. If you didn’t win, dust yourself off. Each of us, beginning December 1, are on equal footing again. We’re all looking at the blank page, and preparing ourselves to fill it. 

Congratulations to all of you, you’re all amazing writers. Now, let’s write.