An Ode to NaNoWriMo

I haven’t talked about it much on my Twitter/blog, but I did NaNoWriMo for the sixth year in a row, and this time? I actually won.

It feels weird to be typing those words here, since this is mostly a book review blog. I didn’t make a conscious effort to avoid talking about my writing, but it’s turned out that way. The last three years of my life have been all about writing (I graduated with a degree in creative writing), and I think my brain wanted to take a break from that. I’ve spent the last year learning about my identity as a writer and I think it shows in this project.

While I have been writing daily for the last seven months (I graduated in March), NaNo was the first time I’d actually started a new project, albeit a really sloppy and crazy one. I love the pace of NaNo, even as I curse it for not letting me get any sleep. I love that it forces me to turn off that dreaded inner editor and just write. And most of all, I love that it teaches me to believe in my own words.

I’m going to revise this book. How can I not believe in it? I can already see a January of bleary-eyed revisions and lots of hair-tearing. But for now, I’m going to stare at that word counter for another ten minutes and soak in the awesome that is winning NaNoWriMo.

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The prologue from Dead Hearts (working title):

When I was five years old, I killed my first faery.

The way Nan Beth used to tell it was hair-raising, in the way only a world weary elder can terrify you. The tiniest details become the skeleton of it, pushing truth aside to the farthest corners of your mind. Until even I began to doubt that it had just been an old doll, with moveable arms and legs and neck, adorned with spiked wings and a mouth of silver grins. I had slammed it down in a temper tantrum when my father refused to give me a pony for my birthday. I can almost remember the screams.

If I stare long enough at my palms, I can still see the glimmer of blue-grey faery blood on my skin.

This work by Angeli Cruz – Mermaid Vision Books is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.