It's Just Abbey

I bet you are all wondering how NaNoWriMo turned out for me this year. Well you must wait no more! I received a congratulatory email from the site a few moments ago and figured I had kept the world waiting long enough. (Unless you follow me on Twitter, in which case, you already know.)

Spoiler alert: I won! Break out the party hats!

I will say that this year was almost a little more difficult than previous years. I am not sure why but it was a bit more, what’s the word… Agonizing. That would be my summary of NaNoWriMo 2009: Hell on earth. This seemed to be the case for many of my writing buddies. While we were all excited and ready to go, somewhere around the 15th we all lost steam. My story this year dealt with a lot of very deep concepts and social commentary so it was hard to write out with the power it deserved every day.

I’ve heard writing a novel compared to many things but I will always connect with the idea that writing a book is like being in a relationship. The beginning is absolute magic, the middle is full of rough patches and rekindled love and the end is a rapid hell fire of emotion and desperate plea to be over. So maybe writing a novel isn’t about being in a GOOD relationship because it is a relationship that is doomed to end at some point but both you and the novel know that going into it.

It was a tough year but I will say I am proudest of this year’s work. It is a book that I poured a lot of soul into and created from scratch. It is something I may actually let people read one day. Shocking, yes. I will be picking it back up in a few weeks to start editing. Maybe after that someone will be allowed to read a few pages.

It is said that inside everyone is a story waiting to get out. I finally got mine on paper and I couldn’t be happier. It was a struggle to get every detail right and make a rough draft that I can call wonderful but I did it.

To my other writers this year, whether you “won” or not I hope it was worth that struggles and joy. Congrats on everything everyone, grab your little green notebooks and I will see you all in 2010!