November is National Novel Writing Month. It's the latest project I've taken on. Last month was Inktober, and I drew all 31 prompts, it's my second year doing that, I love it. It takes me places with my art I otherwise would have never thought of.
NaNoWriMo is a project with a word-count goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. Rounding up, that's about 1700 words a day.
I was NAILING it. Shooting past the goal every day, saving my work...
...or so I thought...
My computer did something funky one night during routine scheduled maintenance, and I LOST nearly all of it. I was up to over 20k words and BAM, all but 8k GONE. I had put a lot of emotional work into that. I'm writing my story. I've always been told I should, and all the signs kept pointing me towards it, so I finally took it on. So it's not like I could forget what I wrote, but I had it all JUST SO, ya know?
OMG, I was devastated. I lost it. I kicked a box, thinking nothing of it because it was empty. Amazon uses GOOD boxes, lol. I broke my effing toe, man!
Anyway, after busting my butt double time for a while, I caught back up in less than two weeks. I'm pretty sure I wrote it better the second time,so there's that...
It's been a very emotional and triggering endeavor... Telling these stories has taken me back to places, dark places... But that just reinforces my need to get it all out.
It's like a scab you thought had healed, so you go to just, you know, tug it off and BAM. DAMN IT, it's bleeding again...
I've always been of the conviction, though, that if my story, whether it's my mental health story, my sobriety, my coming out, the victory over addiction or other stories of obstacles overcome, I simply MUST tell it.
Just the other day, for instance, an old friend came to me and asked my advice on coming out, as she was tired of living a lie.
That's not even the first time someone has come to me like that... Yet another sign, to me.
Idk if I'll move to try to publish or not, but this whole experience has been very enlightening and an amazing reflection... When you want to tell your story, and you want to tell it RIGHT, there's a certain level of intense honesty and raw openness. I've learned a lot. About myself and about lessons I'd thought I was done learning...