Selah // Something Witty

My words, like silent raindrops, fell.

Date: 12.01.17 -- Day 63
Music: "The Sound of Silence" / Disturbed (Simon & Garfunkel Cover)

So I won NaNo this year. First time in completing 50000 words. 50848 to be exact. I didn't expect to feel this hollow.

November hasn't ever really been an ideal time for trying to write, at least for me. There have always been midterms and Thanksgiving travel plans and usually some type of sinus congestion or other ailment that made writing seem like a Herculean task. However, there has always been that little smidgen of hope that one day I get the goods. I've been hacking at this writing challenge for roughly nine years, and this is the first time I've actually crossed the finish line. And I did the thing. I made it work. And all I feel is a weird sense of dissatisfaction, more so than years prior when I wasn't even close to the 50000.

Maybe it's because this past month has been full of disappointment and dread. There has been a litany of things that have gone utterly wrong that I'm paying for, and will continue to pay for, for the foreseeable future. So my writing has been me just kind of phoning it in. Everything I got done seems like a long list of words that don't really belong together. There is no coherent anything. It's just this massive amount of whatever. This feels like I typed the same three words over and over and over again. I finished sometime this morning and all I can think of is that this is not success.

So I'm calling this a technical win, not a real emotional win. I haven't accomplished what I set out to do. I haven't really connected with these characters or that small thing called a plot. Had I not been a part of the Write-A-Thon (Go Team Gold!) I wouldn't have even counted what I did on the word counter at all. This is my autumn of discontent made entirely of exhaustion and keyboard smashes. So, as the bitter winds pick up outside, I'm going to do what I do best - I'm going to set my work on metaphorical fire and watch it burn down to ash before I begin again.

December is now my re-NaNo month. Instead of editing, I'll be hacking and rewriting at this dumpster fodder to try and shape it into something worth the time I spent on it. Maybe I can make it work. Maybe it'll be a lost cause. Maybe I'm just setting myself up for another fail. But I need to make something out of this disaster that was November. I need make myself feel like I actually earned this "win". Otherwise, what was the point, you know?