My favorite thing to write have always been beginnings.
Beginnings are pure creativity, existing in a world of pure possibilities. There are no promises to keep, only dreams of the distant horizon. Traditionally, NaNoWriMo insisted that you set aside unfinished projects and spend the month on something entirely new – a thirty-day stand, if you will. It ripped away all your inhibitions – who cares about dignity or even making sense? The only thing that matters is words on the page. The unspoken promise is that you never actually needed to follow up on the project; all writing is practice. Most of my NaNoWriMo drafts were experiments I never touched again, aside from the occasional turn of phrase. I think some of my best prose was composed by this brute-force method, and without the challenge they would never exist. It was intoxicating. It was exhilarating. I’ve never known anything quite like it.
Many professional writers give themselves a manageable daily word count goal without any sort of institutional structure aside from their publishing contract. Stephen King is a famous example of this writing method. Technically, 50,000 words is enough to count as a novel but most novels tend to be significantly longer. Cinder by Marissa Meyer, for example, started out as a NaNoWriMo project with 70,000 words in the first draft. The challenge can exist on its own, and for many people it remains that way. This makes it easy for many people to wash their hands of the institution, and I respect this choice.
I can’t do that. It would be dishonest, and it would leave out the best part.
The true magic to me was the NaNoWriMo community, which due to its anonymity was, for the most part, scattered to the winds.
I was very lucky to keep in touch with a few fellow writers, who have become my close friends. For the sake of their anonymity, I will leave it at that. There are also extremely talented writers who I regret I will probably never hear from again... I might as well throw a Hail Mary, but if by any chance the NaNoWriMo user TheLoyalOne is reading this, please know that I’ve thought about your characters and loved them for well over ten years. I’m forever grateful for your guidance and I wish you well.
