To NaNo or Not to NaNo?

Okay, so I’ve been trying to write a romance novel since 1994.

Not the same one mind you. There have been several aborted attempts. There was the one about a teacher in a finishing school for ladies, who falls in love with a soldier recently returned from Waterloo to serve as guardian to his dead brother’s son. There was the one about the Martha Stewart-esque Regency housekeeping maven receiving death threats from a group of anti-aristocracy fanatics who falls in love with the Government agent sent to protect her. There was the contemporary mystery about the librarian who moves back home to her small town in Alabama and falls in love with the police chief. You name the plot, I’ve got the novel to go with it.

But somehow, I never make it past the first few chapters. Why? Mostly because I am great at convincing myself that I’m not very good at it. Over the past year or so, however, some things have happened that make me think I might actually have something that readers might like. The first thing was Drabble writing on the Eloisa James Bulletin Board. I whipped out a couple of these 500 word stories–sometimes about everyone’s favorite rake, Mayne, and sometimes about characters who just leapt from my fingers to the screen–and people on the board seemed to like them. A lot. Of course it’s hard to tell when your friends are encouraging you. Because that’s what friends do. So when the Avon Fanlit contest started I entered. And a beautiful thing happened. Complete strangers liked what I wrote. They wrote glowing compliments–okay some of them did. Some of them suggested I hang on to my day job. And I made the top ten. Four times. But something else happened with Fanlit. Something more important than being praised: I got some self discipline. For over a month, I wrote 3000 words a week. They weren’t about my own characters, but they were my words.

Now, I’ve decided to take the plunge and participate in National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. This will require at least 1667 words A DAY to make the goal of 50,000 words in one month. This terrifies me. What if my writing really does suck and everyone at Fanlit was just being polite? What if I do finish and no one likes what I wrote? What if I simply can’t do it? All of these doubts are what NaNoWriMo strives to combat. It is a contest about silencing the inner critic. It is about just doing it.

It is about finishing the darned story.

Though I’ve still got doubts. I’m going to try it. I’ve got to finish something. If only to prove to myself that I can.

It’s going to be a long month, but at the end of it, I’ll have finished a novel.

Wish me luck.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? Have you ever started something you didn’t finish? Inquiring minds want to know!