Well, I fell short of the 50,000 goal for National Novel Writing Month. I hit roughly 32,400 words. I was disappointed with my results, but it did teach me something. Before November, I had nothing written on this project. I had a lot of ideas, and figured I would write once I had a break from classes. The reality is that when a break from classes would come, something else would rear its head. We aren’t given breaks for our creative pursuits. We have to greedily steal the time for these pursuits. Nanowrimo made me hunt for time. I would sneak writing in between answering e-mails. I would write in the mornings and in the evenings. I searched for any gap in my schedule I could find. Now, I have over 30,000 words that I didn’t have before this month. Granted, most of these words are garbage, but I’ll take fifty pages of letters over a blank page any day. Sometimes, we have to stop waiting for miraculous “free time” to show up in our lives. We have to force that which is important into our lives by any means necessary. This is what National Novel Writing Month taught me.
C.S. Branam 