Cheers to NaNoWriMo 2020
By: Stephanie Block
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Nonprofit, Fiction, Writing

Cheers to NaNoWriMo 2020

Now more than ever, our stories need to be told.

If anyone asks me my dream, I say it is to write the greatest novel the world has ever known. If anyone asks me how it’s going, I gaze sheepishly at the empty wine bottles in the recycling bin and the plane tickets littering my desk and say things like, “Oh I’m still gathering material.” But if I’m being honest, I have oodles of material. I could write thirty-seven young adult series! Serieses? I should check that.

I’m in the wine industry (hence the empty bottles — work related FYI), and I travel a lot. Those twenty-year Burgundian retrospectives won’t taste themselves! Yet even trapped in a flying tin can for twelve hours, I don’t work on my brilliant world-changing novel. Is there no end to my procrastination I ask as I smile at the unattached man in 6E? Then my iCal taxis onto the runway of November. There is a brief pause in the action before the champagne mayhem of the holidays.

Is there no end to my procrastination I ask as I smile at the unattached man in 6E?

So, like the Port vintage declaration of 2011, I first joined NaNoWriMo that year with great intention and fanfare. Logging onto the website was a step towards my dream, and most every year since I still believe that this time I’m going to finish. Like sipping a sultry sherry, writing is something I can’t do alone. I need the community discipline of fellow dreamers. Happily, NaNo has so many resources. I join forums and attend virtual and in-person write-ins. Sometimes, I catch a tailwind burst of word count, and other times I hit the turbulence of blank page struggle. I watch the altimeter rise shyly on my NaNo dashboard — 200 words yesterday, another 400 today. I cruise well below the 50,000-word trajectory. Ugh.

I need the community discipline of fellow dreamers.

But that’s okay. We’re all bound for fruition. Me. You. The forum woman commenting from a fairytale “Upon” something UK town. The famous writer giving the Pep Talk. We NaNo together because writing can be a relentlessly solitary pursuit, and some of us (thumbs pointing at self) flail without accountability. Even that scoundrel word count graph is a cruel and effective writing coach. It feels nice to furnish the abyss with these things.

I am writer. Hear me or.

Especially this November of pandemic, panicky half full flights and that meteor they’re saying is on the way — this has got to be my year of finishment, of finally and mercilessly fermenting all the raw heartbreak and vivid inspiration, of barefoot stomping plot and character until they bleed and blending them with setting and syntax. If you’ve ever walked through a barrel room where alchemical juices percolate away, you know how this works. The winemaker somehow sees into the concoction’s future, how sweet or dry it will be, its hue and power. Will our stories be palatable? Intoxicating, even? Will they linger upon the senses once they’re put down?

NaNoWriMo 2020 has to be a banner year. The team of all humanity needs a win. Now more than ever, our stories need to be told. Tell them as a gentle cove for the overwhelmed. Tell them as a fury against loss and injustice. Tell them messy and clean ’em up later. Just tell them. Uncork everything that’s been bubbling up all year and pour it out like a gorgeous deluge of dizzying dazzling disturbing truth.

Tell your stories messy and clean ’em up later. Just tell them.

Come on this joyous, life-changing, maddening journey with us this month. Join NaNoWriMo.org today! Also donate if you can, and if you like what you see here, add a response to let us know if you’d like to contribute to this publication.

Cheers!

Stephanie

❤ NaNoWriMo Board Member since 2019, participant since 2011 ❤