Write by Wednesday… November is my MOST Insecure Writing Month

November, inevitably, makes me an even more insecure writer. Why? Because there is no way in heck I could write even an awful, terrible, mistake-riddled manuscript for a novel in a month. Even if I quit my job and holed up in my office, it just would not happen.

I recently read  Tia Bach’s Chasing Memories (you can read my review here) which was born out of a NANO project.  I loved so many things about this book, but the whole time I read it I was in awe of Tia’s ability to write that draft  in a month.

Max and Menna took me ten years to write-- I started it at 16 and finished it at 26, so they were 10 formative years. I grew up with those characters, and they grew out of my own life learning. When reviews for the book started coming in and many people mentioned that the characters felt so real to them,  I was ecstatic… because they are real to me, too.

And then my good friend Tia writes a character like Reagan from Chasing Memories… in a month! Reagan was almost as real to me as my Menna, vaulting off the page and feeling as though she were sitting right next to you telling you her story.

Fundamentally, I understand that we all write at different speeds and paces. I should not be comparing myself to those that can write faster than I can as necessarily being an indicator that they are “better writers.”  Nonetheless, I will remain in slightly-envious awe of all of you NANO writers. My November goal is to finish a whole chapter of my third novel.