I am visually impaired since birth and before the usual comments arise: No, glasses don’t help completely, contact lenses also don’t and are so uncomfortable to me that I don’t want them and the remaining impediment is still significant. I also live in a foreign country (the UK) since September, for studying software engineering in cooperation with the college in Germany where I studied the first 2 years. As you might have guessed, I am German. (You have read my rather aggressive introduction, concerning my disability. I have to excuse for this, but most people don’t take it seriously and confuse muddling and scraping through with having no difficulties. I had almost no support at school and college in Germany and thus often had to justify for my difficulties.)

Computers always were different and always alluring. In the era of the DOS-prompts and EGA graphics, screens were easily readable and the lack of peripheral vision was not an issue at all. This was one of the reasons, why I got into computers, programming and creative processes using them as a hobby and later as a possible carreer. The fact that NaNoWriMo only requires a computer, creativity and time was one of the reasons why I felt interested in it since quite a while already: I felt like competing with others on equal ground, unimpaired.

I did NaNoWriMo last year under almost ideal circumstances: college had a low workload, my computer was quick and had a large CRT screen, and I had the support of the German/Cologne community. This year was not as ideal: university in the UK is more stressful than private German college classes, I could not bring my main system to England because I moved by train. This meant that all writing had to be done on a netbook with a 9 inch screen. Another big shock was the size of the community, or rather: its lack of said attribute. I thought the fact that England requires many groups while “Europe :: Germany & Austria” is one was related to the number of active people in it. I must have been wrong: The forum had 1 thread when I registered and never got past one page. Despite this, I won and reached the verified word count of last year (66666 words).

Why have I been so crazy? Mostly because I had a good story and a plot. I often write out of a feeling of alienation and this year, I had sufficient amounts of that (being in a different country without family, boyfriend or friends) that the story flowed rather easily. I have not finished it yet, but I feel connected to it and I feel that I can finish it gracefully (unlike my first NaNovel, which is finished but the end is illogical and probably rushed). The strange feeling when saying something and the other person reacts as if something completely different was said was a powerful inspiration.

Having to write on a netbook, I had to be creative concerning the tools, I used. Office programs are fond of either rending the text unreadably small or requiring lots of horizontal scrolling. Thus, I wrote text in my favorite text editor (called joe) in Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, since I can read that font easily even when it is not that huge. I still set my terminal to a font size which makes 80 characters per line fill the screen. Since this setup means that the resulting text is quite differently formatted from text someone else might want to read, I formatted the text in the typesetting system LaTeX (it only required a few commands to copy and paste unlike, for example HTML and seeing the beautifully formatted text, LaTeX produced was very inspiring to me, it made my text look like it was of far better quality). Despite the font, I leaned forward far too much. I must have looked occasionally as if I wanted to crawl into the screen. That meant backache after a few weeks, which was annoying. Heatpads helped against the pain and their presence reminded me to sit correctly. During the last week, I always used one on my back when writing.

What I have learnt in this NaNoWriMo was mainly… that a certain amount of abandon, of ignoring the stuff out there and focussing on one thing is something helpful. Instead of worrying about countless little things which do not matter in the end (like mispronouncing things, which was always a fear for me in stores), it forced my mind to work towards one goal and only one. I have learned other things, like the time it takes to travel from Southampton to London and the name of Washington D.C. in Esperanto, but the importance and joy of an extreme, narrow and specific focus was something I had almost forgotten.

`If you are visually impaired and consider NaNo, I say go for it. You might not finish and it is not easy, but the feeling when you are completely in the story and when you see that the text you wrote in one month is more than 100 pages is incredible. (And if it is of any consolation to you: look into the fora, especially `NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul’ and you will see that unimpaired NaNovellers struggle equally hard.)

So, this year was my very first attempt at NaNoWriMo and I won! I didn’t write every single day, but I kept at it. I decided to try  NaNo because I wanted to get back into my writing.

Along the way, I had times where, due to the weather flip-flopping around, I was in too much pain to focus, or in too much of a fog from my pain meds. I also had to buy myself a wrist brace to combat flares of carpal tunnel from all that typing!

I just wanted to hit the 50k mark, but I ended up going beyond that and actually finishing my NaNovel this year! I exceeded my own expectations, and I am amazed by what I accomplished.

I learned that I can do anything if I really set my mind to it through this process, and I have decided to challenge myself to write as many words as possible in 2010! Of course, those words are also from papers for school, and whatever else I feel like including. But, I have lots o plans for more writing as I keep going on in my life.

Writing is a good friend and great healer. I’ve learned so much about my own inner motives via my characters that it’s difficult for me to keep things separate sometimes. I have learned that following what my heart tells me may not make me rich, but it will sure make me a lot happier. Happiness is important for your sanity. Even when everything else is in chaos, if you can cling to that little island of happiness and sanity, you can make it through anything!

Oh good.  Just my great luck to get something that literally only a handful of doctors understand.  Cushing’s is one of those diseases where the official stats are something like 10 to 25 people out of a million get It, but I have met several people that I just knew for sure that they had Cushing’s; their hump was a dead giveaway.  Yes, that’s right, a hump.

In addition to the hump, I had a “moon face” where my face was so swollen it was twice the normal size, massive weight gain, cystic acne on my chin, a beard, male patterned baldness, wide stretch marks and my periods were screwed up on top of everything else.  These were only the outward symptoms; imagine what was going on beneath the skin.  The depression was overwhelming at times, and don’t even get me started about the insomnia.

In the most simplistic overview, Cushing’s Disease is too much cortisol. The pituitary gland, in the brain, is the master thermostat for the body’s hormones and steroid production.   The pituitary gland sends out chemicals to alert the adrenal glands, on top of the kidneys, to pump out the right amount of cortisol, a steroid.  In Cyclical Cushing’s Disease, a tumor tries to take over the functions of the pituitary. To make things even more complex, the tumor typically is not a well defined mass, it is usually a puddle of white goo involved in a complicated feedback loop where everything gets messed up. Puddles of goo do not show up well on MRIs or CT scans.   There are several types of Cushing’s, but I’m making this as simple as I can.

It took me a long time for me to get used to the idea that I had a brain tumor.  Note, I didn’t say brain cancer, I said tumor.  The surgery to remove the tumor didn’t cure me; I have a tumor somewhere else. Maybe in other parts of my skull, my brain or perhaps the tumor in my lung is another Cushing’s tumor. It just needs to be a few cells worth of tumor to wreak havoc.

There are many doctors out there that will tell you that it is impossible to have Addison’s and Cushing’s at the same time because they are polar opposite diseases. Addison’s is not enough cortisol while Cushing’s is too much. Some Cyclical Cushing’s patients achieve the impossible.

I would start the week in an Addisonian state, a Low cortisol state, and sleep for about 36 hours at a stretch.  I would slowly arrive at the “Normal.”   A place I felt balanced and sane.  But Normal would only last a few days before I would end up with so much cortisol pumping through my veins that I would be in a High and not sleep for 40 – 50 hours at a stretch.  Trust me, you really don’t want to be awake for 70 – 80 hours at a go, things start get freaky right about then.  Then as if a switch flipped, I would be flung back into the Addison state. It was a horrible, terrifying loop that I could not break. I would be flung off the cliff where I would lie broken and battered amid the rocks, only to be compelled to race back to the top crag as soon as I could move.  I was in this cycle for months, every week was the same terrible pattern.

Since we couldn’t find the trigger, we had to take away the ammunition.  In December 2006, I fairly bounced into the hospital to have both of my adrenal glands removed. Five days later, I needed a walker to go as far as the bathroom. This is major abdominal surgery, bilateral adreanalectomy, and by comparison the brain surgery is conservative.  I now have Addison’s Disease full time, instead of switching back and forth between Cushing’s and Addison’s.

Now I just lie at the bottom of the cliff, still battered but now working myself up to get ready to head out on the plains instead of racing to the top of the precipice to hurl myself out into space.

My skin is now beautiful and flawless, well, for a woman my age anyway. I no longer have male patterned baldness and my hump is shrinking. Where once I would run my hand through my hair and come away with handfuls, I now hardly lose any.  Once again my hair is thick and curls softly.  My face is still round but not freakishly so but I haven’t lost any weight.  I still have days with the near crushing fatigue, but now it is near and not totally crushing.  But the best indication that I’m getting better is that my PCP no longer feels that I’m going to keel over dead in her office.

I just started growth hormone therapy and I have hope that that will go a long way to help me feel better, to recover.  While I don’t for a minute believe the hype that it will make me look younger, I do believe that it will make me feel like I’m 50 instead of 80. I’ll take feeling a little older then I am over a lot older.  Because I don’t have a pituitary gland anymore, growth hormone is just one of the hormones that I need replaced. From what I’ve been lead to believe, wound healing is a good thing.  I currently have a few minor scratches from my new kitten, these minor scratches still have not healed after more than a month. This is a problem.

So, that is my major chronic illness and how it effects me.  Compared to that everything else is relatively easy: the asthma, the near constant nausea, a near shot immune system, and  the onion of pain with its many layers, the fibromyalgia, the costrocondritus, the pancreatitis, and the brutal headaches that make my migrains look like simple tension headaches.

I am just one giant game of whack a mole, but I’m never sure if I’m the hammer or the mole.

I am no longer surprised when I wake up in the morning.

I first heard about NaNoWriMo a week after NaNo 2005 started.  Writing a novel hadn’t really been in my plans until after I retired. But as soon as she explained what it was, I was hooked. I quickly realized though, that with my over loaded class and work schedule I wouldn’t have time that year.  I don’t even remember what that novel was going to be or where the notes are. But I was hooked; I had swallowed the lure of becoming a novelist.

Even with the Cushing’s tumor growing, eating my pituitary gland, I thought I could handle everything, but that was before I got really bad. I eventually had to take a leave from school, from my health, my dreams.

For the next few years I felt like I was Eddy the Eagle. I attempted NaNo06 and almost reached 20 thousand words. I was interrupted by brain surgery and have not made it back to finish that novel.  I realized that I was too sick to even attempt NaNo07, and NaNo08 saw less than 300 words.

But then NaNo09 rolled around. I felt energized the way I had for ’05 and ’06. I was going to shoot for 30 thousand words, not the whole 50K. I thought for sure that I could hit my goal since I had the whole month instead of a few weeks.  October was spent carefully plotting out a re-write of my NaNo’06 Novel “Shades of Grey.”  Or rather, October was to be carefully spent that way. Instead, the second week I stopped sleeping. After I hit about 80 hours without sleep, Wednesday, one of my doctors sent me to the ER, I got about three hours of sleep after being shot full of sleepy time meds and steroids, and then I slept for just over two hours that night, but the insomnia returned.

Thursday morning, I got a frantic call from a distant friend I’ve known since the 8^th grade, wanting to know if her 14 year old daughter could come live with us. Serous bad juju going down at their place, several hundred miles away. Not knowing if I was going to get a hellcat or a kitten, I did the only thing I could, I said of course.

So, I had to carve out a bedroom for my new foster daughter. The only place to put her was my studio/guest room. This is also the room my husband just stuffs stuff when he wants it out of the way.  I had to figure out where I was going to get the energy to clean up, clear out space for someone who was going to be staying a long time.  Like permanent. Gulp.

I got the room ready, and then it was time for NaNo09. I was ready. I had my beloved story all plotted out, the re-write was going to go off without a hitch. Every scene was noted and all characters were done to the point where I had their horoscopes plotted and their back story back a generation. I was set. I was ready. I was go. All I had to do was wait for the stroke of midnight, November 1, 2009 and I was going to be writing. I was going to finish my dear story that I had started three years previous.

And then I read Chris Baty’s “No Plot, No problem.”

I realized that I couldn’t re-write my beloved “Shades of Grey” for NaNoWriMo this month.  I couldn’t write it because I love it.  I am invested in it to the point where I don’t want to take risks with it. I cannot imagine killing off my characters because I am so emotionally attached to them and the story. NaNoWriMo is 30 days of literary abandon. To me that says writing full bore, petal to the metal, to hell with the speed limit, road trip!  I had to come up with a new plan.

On Halloween night, 12:05 A.M. we walked into the Denny’s restaurant for the Seattle Write-in, my first one.  I sat down with my pad of paper and my pen and just started writing. I had no clue where I was going to go or what I was going to write. All I knew was that I was going to write about 30 thousand words towards a novel. I knew that I likely would not finish, but I was going to give it my best shot. I was going to write like I dance even when people are watching. I was just going to do it.

I wrote about 1,300 words, five pages of my cramped writing in the two plus hours we were there.  The next morning I transcribed what I had written and then wrote until I had two thousand words.  I wrote 2,000 words a day and more daily until my foster daughter was to arrive, I gave myself a nice cushion because I knew I wouldn’t be able to write the two days the mother was with us.  I gave myself enough of a cushion so I could start writing big again on the weekend.

But I ended up being completely wiped out by everything. I couldn’t even get out of bed Sunday for more than a few minutes at a time. I had no energy to even sit at my computer and read my boards or check email. Not writing anything on Sunday put me behind, then I couldn’t write Monday or Tuesday either.  I didn’t get anything written Wednesday, but because I was still in bed, I decided to write more by hand and I was actually able to catch up.  I wrote for a little at a time, 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there.  Just writing when I felt up to it.

Then I would transcribe when I felt up to sitting at my computer. I might write some at my keyboard, but mostly I handwrote large sections while I was in bed.  I wrote 50 pages of my novel by hand with pen or pencil in an old battered spiral bound notebook. Sometimes the big challenge was to read my own writing.

The other thing that made a huge difference in my word count was finding the right music for writing.  I thought that something nice in the background would be the perfect soundtrack. Maybe something to soothe my jangled nerves.  Nope, it turns out that for this novel, the right music was surf guitar. Dick Dale, The Safaris, The Trashmen, The Ventures, their staccato notes were echoed by my fingers flying across my keyboard. I hit 9,000 one night. And I knew I was not going to write 30K. I was going to finish. I was going to win.  I was going to complete my very first novel.  My final word count for “Halfway to Dreamland” was 52,198 words.

One of the big things I have learned from my disability is the importance of community.  I don’t know if I can even put it into words. Just knowing that there were other people who hurt, who struggled daily, helped.  I watched in amazement as others just seemed to explode into a cascade of words, like a sky rocket of ink.  I really felt emboldened by their success. If they could do it, if Robert could write something like 400,000 words then I could write my 50K.  If RovingJack could write his novel in three days then I could write mine in a month. One after another, so many people in the disabled writer’s thread turned purple or green. It was truly inspiring.

I learned that I really do love words. That writing is like drawing only with a different type of brush and a different pallet. I surprised myself by winning. I love that I have written a novel. I don’t know how good it is, but it is mine. No one else could have written it. But I love it with the same intensity of the first blush of love, where I am giddy and silly and want to leap about the house, jumping on the sofa like when I was five.

I learned that if I can write one novel, I can write another.

The symptoms of CFS are common for a lot of other illnesses, making it hard to diagnose.  Exhaustion.  Fibromialgic pain during flare ups.  Inability to recover from exercise.  Feeling ill during pressure changes.  Loss of cognitive function, often called brain fog.  For me, that means planning my day so I don’t do too much at once.  It means living with my parents so they can take care of me.  I try not to commit to much of anything, because I don’t know when the next flare up will be.  I keep track of every ounce of energy, take many pills and try to find things that I can still do while sick, so I don’t feel worthless.  Things like crochet, art and computers have kept me sane.

I had known about NaNoWriMo for years, and have always wanted to do it, but every year there were other very involving projects that I wanted to do more, and I wouldn’t even think about it until just before November or a few days in.  This year I remembered in October, and I thought about it.  There were no other projects that had to get done.  I had a laptop this year, so I could type on my bad days.  And what better thing do to while stuck in bed?  So I signed up, filled out my author info and waited anxiously for November 1st to start.

From the beginning I wanted a finished novel by the 30th, not just 50k, so I would write as much as I could every day.  I had a major flare up throughout all November, so I was spending much more time in bed than I normally do.  What else was there to do but to write like crazy?  I wasn’t always coherent enough to talk, but writing was easier, and planning to edit it later helped me let go.  It’s strange to say, but I think my chronic illness helped me finish my novel.  How else would I have the time?  What else would give me such motivation?  There were days when the illness interfered, of course.  Times when I couldn’t put my thoughts together enough to comprehend letters, or the pain just wouldn’t let me ignore it.  But I wrote more than I needed each day and had planned my count so I could have Saturdays to catch up, and those really terrible days were rare.

I honestly didn’t think it was going to be as easy as it was.  For once I had a complete outline before starting.  I was writing every day.  I had a visual representation of how much work I was putting in, and I was meeting and exceeding those goals.  It was exciting.  Letting go of my internal editor was the best thing that has ever happened to my writing.  It felt like a dam broke and words were spilling out.  After a few days the floods slowed and I had to work to get my daily goals, but it was still so much fun.  Having friends on my buddy list was great, pushing me to exceed what I expected of myself.

I felt more like a normal person that month than I had in years.  When I had flare ups, other people had parents banning computer time or work that demanded overtime.  My problems for once weren’t more or unusual, just different.  Everyone had something that tried to stop them from writing.  And I was still winning. I was still beating the word counts of my friends who were well.  I thought this might be like winning a marathon race, only I had a real document with words in it I could show for it.  Nothing was going to stop me that month.  It was a valuable, wonderful experience, and I’m going to do it again every year.

My advice for other chronically ill aspiring writers is to first, get a laptop.  Shop around, buy online, maybe buy used or get a refurbished netbook like I did.  It isn’t a terribly expensive thing to buy for something that gives you such freedom.  Second, plan for those bad days, they’re going to happen one way or another.  Make sure you have enough leeway built in that it won’t hurt you to stop when you need to.  And even if you don’t have enough leeway, you still need to rest, get better, and don’t feel guilty that you just aren’t going to get that word count today.  Recover first, then push.  Lastly, write something every day.  Even one word will keep you in the habit.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but I’ve also always felt like it was something I had to work towards.  Something I could be someday, not now.  NaNoWriMo has taught me how to be a writer now, and I actually feel like one.  Like I can do this.  I feel like a writer who happens to be ill, not an ill person who happens to write.  And I think that’s something everyone can have with NaNoWriMo.

I first heard of NaNoWriMo in 2002, when I was in graduate school at UCLA. It sounded intriguing, but I dared not do it, because I was heading towards a depressive episode and already struggling with my coursework. I — doubtless correctly — thought that I could not handle writing term papers and a novel at the same time. After I was obliged to leave grad school because of my inability to concentrate on my studies during my depressive episode, I had a long writer’s block and did not feel like writing fiction. This upset me, since my identity as a (future) novelist is important to me.  By this year [2009], however, my condition (both healthwise and financial) had stabilized enough that I felt freer to imagine and to write.

Why did I decide to do NaNo? I wanted to prove to myself that I could write and finish a draft of a novel, and an idea for a novel was in my head. I thought that it would be excellent if I could use that novel idea for NaNo.

How did my disability affect my NaNoWriMo experience? It influenced the subject matter of my novel. Although I often like to write about historical figures, I think I was drawn to telling the story of the marriage of Charles Boyer and Pat Paterson partly because Boyer apparently struggled with depression and ultimately committed suicide after Paterson’s death. I was afraid that I would glamorize suicide in my novel.

What did I expect of NaNo going in? I thought that it would be fairly easy to write 1500-2000 words a day, especially since I had a clear plot outline already in mind. This was more difficult than I thought. At weekend write-ins, I often wrote more than 2000 words a day, but during the week, it was often hard to write even 200 words a day. However, I did manage to write every day until the last week, when I caught a bad cold and felt too miserable to write. I caught up on the last weekend by going to two write-ins and having Pat Paterson read and comment on a chapter of Cardinal Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua when preparing to convert to Catholicism in 1944. (The excerpt from Apologia Pro Vita Sua added a good 20,000 words in itself! I would not have added those 20,000 words if I were not interested in getting a free proof copy of my novel from CreateSpace. Since winners have until June to validate the offer, I decided to remove those excerpts– as well as add scenes, tighten up the structure, etc. — when preparing my proof copy.)

There were big gaps in my knowledge: the names of Pat Paterson’s parents and siblings, for example. I decided that I would make up provisional names, personalities and appearances for Pat’s family of origin, based on what little I had found out about her family background. After all, this was only a first draft: I could do more research later and find out what the actual names and appearances were, and by that get some idea as to the personalities.

What did I learn about myself during the process? That I can be quite energetic and motivated given the right material; that I have to take care of my health — staying up till all hours doing research will not be good for me in the long run; that there are people outside my immediate family who care about me and are willing to help me fulfill my ambitions. Also, I learned that I am not quite the delicate hothouse flower that I like to present myself as being.

Advice for people with chronic illnesses or disabilities who plan to do NaNo next year? Make sure that you have good time management skills! Mine are not the greatest, but they sufficed because my schedule is largely free: I am unemployed, not in school and have no children. For those who have jobs, classes and/or kids, excellent time management skills are a must. Be sure to get plenty of rest every day, so you don’t get sick.  If you take medication, be sure to take that daily as well. Write for your NaNo at least 15 minutes a day. If you are inspired and want to write 5000 words, great! Do it! But be prepared for the day when you can barely manage to write 200 words on your NaNo. Pick a subject for your novel that you like enough that it will hold your attention for 50,000+ words: if it can hold your attention, it could hold others’ as well. Have some idea what you are doing with your plot: it can be fairly flexible, but don’t let it run away until you have no idea what kind of story it is. Have a goal in mind — e.g., the free CreateSpace proof copy for winners — that can sustain you during the doldrums of Weeks 2 and 3. If all else fails and the end of Week 4 finds you behind on word count, don’t be afraid to use some down-and-dirty techniques to increase the  word count (such as the characters reciting song lyrics, or making shopping lists, or reading Apologia Pro Vita Sua).

Will I do NaNoWriMo next year? Probably, but it is too early to tell. Get back in touch with me in July or August, and I will probably have a more considered answer.

Best of luck to all in their writing endeavors!

Gentillylace

I’m well aware the great adventure and height of my life’s achievement is to provide an effective sleep aid to as many readers as buy my books. I’ve come to appreciate the benefits of a sleep aid that has no aftereffects, does get your mind off the day’s worries, gives you something cool to dream about and won’t interact badly with whatever else you’re taking.

I’ve been doing Nanowrimo every year since 2000, when there were only 140 members and it was an odd little thing. I loved it then. I wrote a 90,000 word novel because being sick and home all the time, three thousand word days weren’t that hard. I literally had and have nothing better to do with my time unless it’s hang out online, paint or other hobbies, play computer games.

I went through some rough years without any benefits or support, staying with friends and sometimes winding up in bad situations because those were the ones that offered me a place to stay. November 2004 was a shining year. My then-roomie was also a writer doing it, we had a cosy place, everything was taken care of, I even had a few benefits coming in locally while I tried for social security yet again without knowing what all was wrong.

I wrote two 80,000 word novels this year.

One of those two, “The Hunt” is now retitled “Curse of Vaumuru” and almost ready to send out on submission. I’ve been editing too.

I finished the first one in ten days. I realized in delight that I might even manage to do three novels that year and tried to do the next by the 20th. Then a new roommate moved in on the 15th and time spent with live people doing other things like help them move in turned it into a 20 day project. I still did two books that year and it stood as my best.

2005 I got Social Security. 2005 I also got sick with a tumor the size of an extra kidney and needed abdominal surgery to have it out — on top of nearly a decade of malnutrition, overexertion, stress and poor conditions, I collapsed. Barely managed 50k that year and it wasn’t really editable. 2006, pretty much nodded through it doing a minimal Nanowrimo. 2007, still recovering. 2008, starting to perk up but mostly taking it easy and goofing off with art and stuff and socializing.

I’d gotten out of the habit of treating Nanowrimo as a challenge because I could win it so easily. I was used to writing novel roughs. It’s fun. A short novel like that is a walk in the park, so I’d treat Nanowrimo as my fun run and do one and stack it with all the other trunk novels and go back to drawing ATCs and hanging out online.

Forgetting who I am and what I wanted to do in life. Resting because I needed to after the very long haul of getting my numerous disabilities sufficiently documented and treated. Half the time my meds would be cut because some doofus GP would think it was a high dose and not trust the pain clinic specialist that gave it to me. Cut my tramadol in half and I lose more than half my function.

But this year something different happened.

This year I turned on the juice. I decided I was going to take it seriously and try for the three-book year that eluded me in 2004. My family were incredibly helpful. My son in law Karl brought up my meals right to my room so I wouldn’t have to go downstairs to them (and rest afterward). They kept my room clean too, I didn’t have to blow out all my body energy on just activities of daily living.

I finished the first 80k book by the sixth. I kept going. I found this thread on the Nanowrimo Site — “Complaints for Overachievers.” This is when I started to understand what went wrong with me and Nanowrimo.

If I wanted to get in three 80,000 word novels because I knew I could’ve done it without that interruption, there were people on the forums who felt intimidated and thought it wasn’t fair for me to complain about losing an entire day of zero words when I already had a green bar.

This wonderful writer Kateness inspired me by going out for a million word year. I found the “Overachievers Club” thread she started and began posting my progress in that, then started an Overachievers Progress Thread when I didn’t want to do Shoutouts for every 5,000 word chapter separately.

What I learned this year is how much I’ve been holding myself back. How much I get put off by social rejection when I start achieving my goals and overachieving. It started with being the too-smart kid in grade school.

You can be intelligent as an adult, drift into circles where people share your interests and not even notice the difference. The trivia game winner with a better memory for detail will trump you every time and no one freaks out that you’re the Brain or stops cheering because you already went past the Win.

Nanowrimo means something very special to me.

It’s Special Olympics for the Gifted.

We’re all special — and not just for disability. We’re all novelists. Doing something most people out there among the general run of people can’t imagine even trying. No doubt discouraged by any number of them ranging from those who just think books are a waste of time and smart people should be distrusted, to those who get jealous of anything you have that they don’t — no matter how much else they have that you’ll never have.

I never will know what it’s like for people to hike, let alone travel on foot like Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring. I have to go by other people’s experience of sports, because for me they were always more about organized bullying than anything else. Unlike most guys, I don’t watch football.

I’m not going to sit there in front of a television and cheer for the people who bullied me as a kid. I’ve got no interest in people getting paid a lot of money to play a game that I couldn’t play. It’s a waste of my time.

Novels aren’t.

This year with Kateness and CrimsonBlood neck and neck for the million-word mark, I plunged ahead at my top speed. I wrote ten, twelve, fourteen hour days. If I write long enough, I trance.

I lose myself in the story. Endorphins kick in, the runner’s high of sustained effort. I’m not even there and I’m sure not feeling the pain. No, my heart and mind are with Leonora facing down her abuser’s ghost, banishing him. I’m following Malcolm and Kartchottee through 1860 San Francisco while the other vampires circle, not sure what to make of this fanged English occultist and his Native American mentor. I’m running off into the Greenwood with seven college kids, one of whom is an elven changeling who’s got to change everything about who he is in order to recognize who he is.

There’s seven books to the Greenwood Series.

Two of them got finished this year. Greenwood Home got started with three days to go because I didn’t want to stop. It hit 65k and change at around ten pm on November 30th and I wrapped up my Five Book Year with five Winners.

Then I spent December 1st through 4th finishing off the last chapters, bringing Greenwood Home up to 89k at a leisurely chapter-a-day pace.

I do this.

I’m the Monster of Wordcount. Not because I’m fast, but because I’m really stubborn. Because once I sit down and start something, time dissolves and I pound away on it till it’s done. That’s usually by chapters. I did big chapters this year and Greenwood Road, the first Greenwood book, started as a break in the middle of Medicine Dance.

A lark, a bit of self indulgent fiction that began as notes on an idea for a third Nanovel that grew dialogue and then a story. Then a good story. 40,000 words later, I still hadn’t even chaptered it but I was hooked and it was as fat as Medicine Show.

So I finished it, then really achieved my best self discipline ever by going back to Medicine Show and finishing that before doing its sequel, Greenwood Gates.

Final count for Nanowrimo 2009: 403,647.

My region, Russellville, Arkansas, ranks seventh for Top 50 Regions by Average Word Count. I was stunned. Yeah, that was me. I moved to a small area and I skewed the curve again, just the way I did in grade school.

I’ve also been doing this for ten years. I’ve prepared for it since I was four years old. There’s only one thing I ever really wanted to do for a living: write imaginative fiction. Anything else was “and a science fiction writer” whether that was “Neurosurgeon and a Science Fiction Writer” or “Cowboy and a Science Fiction Writer” or one of my favorites, “Truck Driver and a Science Fiction Writer.”

I thought I could get a dictation machine and roll on down the roads all night telling stories, drive the big rig and take it to galactic distances. I’ve realized how foolish this is. I’m not sure I’d be able to pay attention to the road if I were that immersed in a novel. Besides, writing the novels might be enough to make a good living someday.

I didn’t get to this level of habituated skill out of nowhere. It took 23 years to finish my first novel, from the disconnected fragments that I wrote longhand in high school at sixteen to the 500 page typed manuscript of 1991 that was too big to throw away, to finishing the last few chapters a couple of years later. I put it into print in 2000. Raven Dance is available at iUniverse.com — just search the bookstore.

Big fat black and red book with a vampire joining the rebels on a dystopian colony world thousands of years in the future — a culture he helped found turned into tyrannical Orwellian dysfunction. It was fun to write and it’s still a good read for a first novel.

The ones I’m doing now are better, especially “Curse of Vaumuru” with all the edits I’m putting in.

It stops being monumental after a while. After you do one or two or three novels, they start to become big but manageable projects. Around the fifth (lifetime) it sank in to me that I knew how to do this thing. That writing a novel was about like driving a car or something. I knew how to do it.

People who have yet to finish a Nanowrimo novel have a wonderful thing to look forward to — that moment of knowing it’s real and you did it. That moment of knowing it’s done.

If that moment happens in December and you don’t get Chris Baty’s cool Winner Certificate, you still win something spectacular. No one, ever, can say you’re Not A Real Writer. That’s a novel, you wrote it, it wouldn’t have existed unless you had. It is a very big deal.

It really is as big an achievement as people that go climb mountains or invent things or create symphonies. The distance between “finished rough draft” and “Final draft ready for publication” is another haul, just involves different skills. It can also be enjoyable.

I know the people facing their first novels are going through a lot more work than I did. But this year I threw in the kind of effort it took to do that and came out with five of them, all good workable roughs.

In 2010 I want to get so used to the editing process that it just flows the way making up the story does. I know that can be done. I’ve found mentors, pro writers who made a good living doing just that. Some of them made a good living during the Great Depression on writing novels.

But the decision to go pro is a lifestyle choice. It has nothing to do with the quality of your novel and everything to do with how you want to live. You may decide it’s better to keep your benefits, polish your novel to final draft, use Lulu or Booklocker or Createspace to make it available and then donate all proceeds to the disease of your choice so that it’s not income.

Good choice if you know you’ll need medical coverage and working would send you driving straight into the doughnut where your medical bills cost more than daily survival.

I’m serious about the pro career because that’s how I want to live. I’ve learned enough about it to know that I can do it and want to do it. I respect amateurs in all the arts because I’m just as stubbornly amateur in terms of painting and drawing no matter how many people like my paintings and drawings. They’re good because I spent years learning how to draw well. They’re not as good as the ones I’d like to be doing but someday I’ll be able to decorate the website of a book I’ve published with good author art.

Heh, and unlike any real professional I could spend a year doing that really cool illustration instead of having to turn it in on Monday. One big reason I am not an artist. I’m not really capable of that “show up every day at the same time” thing, I do not function at my best on schedules that have appointments on them. Let alone meetings. I function best on a calendar schedule.

When you’ve written a novel you have done something wonderful and unique. Told a story that literally no one else on this planet could. That’s beautiful, that is profound, that is worth a lot more than whether you make money on it.

I founded a writing community in 2004, http://www.sffmuse.com/forums is now active again after some hiatus. There’s a progress thread for December Finishers from Nanowrimo and there are members-only beta forums if you want critique and help before the book’s ready for the public — whether you sell it or just set the cover price at base cost and let it out into the world on a no-profit basis.

Next year, I hope to get faster and better at editing as well as much more thorough about sending in submissions. Some year, I want to join that little band of Nanowrimo authors who sold their novels pro, maybe get to write one of the Pep Talks for Chris. I would love to do that.

I bought myself rewards this year because my check doesn’t totally get soaked in daily living expenses. I got the black and red t-shirts, a hoodie, a Winners t-shirt and then a coffee cup for book five. I also donated. I love Nanowrimo — it’s the one time of the year when I’m not alone and the crazy thing I do isn’t crazy.

Hope to see you there!

Once upon a time, you never would have met a girl with bigger goals. I wanted to sky dive, to backpack through Europe, and to climb a mountain. I wanted to go para-sailing, and to learn to surf. I had decided that, eventually, when I went to college, I would study to become an archaeologist – and yeah, they still have those. I was going to get married, and honeymoon in Italy. I wanted to run a marathon, set a world record, and probably had a bigger bucket list than anyone else I knew.

And then, just before I turned seventeen, I found out I have Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis. As a teenager, a blow like that is hard to take; just months before, the world was laying itself at my feet. I think, though, that the doors that closed for me then, I shut myself. I locked them, and threw away the key. I was determined to get by, sure, and I’m so blessed in the fact that my disease isn’t as quickly progressing as so many others, but all I could see was a smart, strong, healthy girl who suddenly wasn’t strong or healthy anymore.

It took a long time to come out of that depression. From that diagnosis was another, and then another, and I felt like I was falling in part. I hurt, all of the time, for what felt like no reason. I had no interest in anything, or anyone that I had once cared about. Then… I found NaNoWriMo.

I had convinced myself that the only thing I could still do was wallow in my own misery. I had blocked out the world, and I made excuses for myself every single day. Then I stumbled on the National Novel Writing Month website, and suddenly… I was interested in something again. It was a stretch, especially at the time – I first did NaNo in 2005, when I had just turned 19 – but I thought to myself, what do you have to lose? Nothing; quite the opposite. I had everything to gain.

My first year, I managed eleven thousand words. That’s all. However, those eleven thousand words were eleven thousand triumphs. They were eleven thousand times I talked myself out of giving up. The next year, I wrote around twenty thousand words. That year, I ended up in the hospital, and wasn’t able to finish. The year after that, I hit about the same. I took last year off. But this year? This year, I won. I wrote fifty thousand words in thirty days. That comes out to about one hundred and one thousand tiny victories – and that is more than many normal people could ever wish for.

Since I began writing, I have completed several published short stories, and published numerous poems. I have had articles in periodicals. I have had some of my photography published. I have sold a few paintings. I have stayed up all night laughing with friends, been too drunk to know my own name, had a beautiful baby boy, and fallen in and back out of love. I have read thousands of books, sung thousands of songs, and overcome so many obstacles that I could never count them. When I wrote those first eleven thousand words, I realized something – I realized that I CAN. Maybe I’ll never jump out of an airplane or climb Mt. Everest; I’ll probably never learn to surf, and I can’t compete on horseback anymore. Maybe I was meant for greater things than those. When I put my proverbial pen to the paper, I can make stories come to life, and I can live things that no one else can through my own imagination. I’m not cursed. I’m blessed, and NaNo gave that back to me.

So, when this year rolled around, I decided that, come hell or high water, I was winning. I had a great idea, big plans for it, a great outline, believable characters. I was ready. It was cutting it close, but with determination and the greatest friends a girl could ever have – even if they ARE just pixels – I crossed the finish line on November 29^th, with 50,129 words. They are rough in a lot of places. There are holes, flaws, and seriously questionable moments. Hey, wait a second – that’s just like me! We’re not finished yet, but when all is said and done, and we’re polished ’til we shine… it’ll be a sight to see.

With all of my love, hope, and dreams,

Kitten <3

It can be little things you still can take pleasure in.  For me it is things scrapbooking, writing this blog, reading a good book.  But sometimes you have to dream big and push yourself.  Sometimes you have to WRITE a good book.

I have multiple chronic illnesses including Sjogren’s Syndrome, Autoimmune Pancreatitis, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Fibromyalgia, and a yet to be diagnosed autoimmune neurological disorder.  I have painfully dry eyes and mouth, constant fatigue, joint pain so severe that I am confined to a wheelchair, severe stomach pain and difficulty digesting food, a tremor, seizures, episodes of paralysis, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, and the list just goes on and on.

There are a lot of things I really can’t do.  So many things I gave up due to my illnesses.  I no longer can go hiking or play tennis.  I can’t even go out in the sun much due to sun sensitivity.  Before I got sick I dreamed of being a filmmaker and was attending University of Southern California’s film school in pursuit of that dream.  Sadly illness and the financial hardship that often comes with it made me a college drop out.  I used to love acting and community theater… another passion I’ve had to let fall by the wayside.

But it hasn’t been all giving things up.  My illness has made me push myself to find new ways to stimulate, entertain, and express myself.  I discovered my passion for scrapbooking and other crafts.  With nothing to do but sit at my computer all day long, I learned I had a knack for the technical .  Now I can build websites and social networks from bed.  I got involved in alternate reality games as a player and later as a game designer.  Through these games I found an online community of the most supportive, caring, and talented people I know who I feel fortunate to call my friends.  Friends that have accepted me illness and all.  I started writing this blog and rediscovered my passion for writing.

Which is why I decided to push myself once more.  The month of November is National Novel Writing Month, and I signed myself up for the second year in a row.  And along with the other participants, I attempted to write a50k word novel in a month.

Leading up to it I was very nervous.  Last year (2008), I was fresh out of a 6 week hospitalization, and my novel succumbed to the pain and the fatigue and the brain fog.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate this year.  That the pain would be too distracting.  That I’d be too tired.  But then I remembered all the things I had already given up and all the things I had gained since this illness began and decided that if I gave up trying, and if I gave up the DREAM then I had already lost.

The first week of nano went fabulously.  I was actually ahead of schedule.  But by the second week I was falling behind.  I had to go see a specialist out of town and was gone for four days.  And after the trip I was so exhausted I mostly just slept and couldn’t do much else.  Then my doctor started me on a new medication that caused a side effect of loosing my memory.  I have absolutely no memory of the week I was on that dose of that medication.  Needless to say I didn’t get much writing done that week.

After I lowered my dose of that medication, I was back in the game, but I was having to play catchup.  I was writing about a thousand words per hour, but the amount of concentration necessary exhausted me to the point I could only write a for an hour or so a day.

But it wasn’t all bad.  Though progress was slower than I would have liked, I was making progress!  By the end of NaNoWriMo I had writen 39k words!  I didn’t “win” in the terms defined by NaNo, but even being able to write 39k words with everything else in my life and all my extra obstacles, I feel like I have won to myself.  I did more than I honestly thought I would be able to do.  And to me, that is a triumph.

And though National Novel Writing Month is now over, the journey for me continues.  I’m only about a third of the way through writing the whole story in my novel.  I have a long way to go, but I am now confident that I will get there!  If you’d like to read a synopsis and excerpt from my novel, check out my NaNoWriMo Profile Page.)

This past month has taught me that if I remember to dream big, I have the capacity to rise to the challenge and do more than I ever thought I could.  That inner faith and hope are things that my laundry list of illnesses can not take away from me.  So I hope you too will think about the things you’ve given up along the way due to your own pain (physical or otherwise) and all the things you’ve gained along you’re own journey, and still remember how to dream big.

If you want to know more, head over to the About page.  If you are ready to share your story, head over to the Share page for instructions.