The Pain of Harsh Words
This one time in college, during the first weekend of November1, I spend the majority of Saturday writing until I reached 25,000 in a single day. I'd seen others on the NaNoWriMo forum talking about their various overachiever antics, and I wanted to give it a try. I did manage to hit that absurd number, sometime close to midnight I think, and it was an incredible feat of stamina and determination. I would definitely not recommend trying it, though, as it burned me out very badly and I couldn't write the rest of the month, and that particular project languishes unfinished in the depths of my computer's hard drive.
But I've always loved writing absurd amounts of words in a single day. I've done 17k, 15k, 9k, etc. My university professor, who was a great mentor, called me a binge writer, and 5k Saturdays used to be a common occurrence.
But then I finished with my graduate degree and had to leave academia for the real world (made extra difficult by a family tragedy that upended my plans), and through a series of choices I ended up in a job I hated with a manager who unintentionally made my life miserable. I worked 10 to 12 hour days doing the work of two people and came back physically and mentally exhausted. It was a desperate struggle every day. Around this time, I went to the internet to find some advice from other writers who perhaps had to work full-time or take care of children without a spouse to help. I supposed I made the mistake of asking internet strangers on Reddit, and one of the internet strangers implied that I should just quit writing all together because I wasn't "finding the time to write" and thus didn't want to do it enough to prioritize it.
This comment hurt me, a lot. Because it wasn't that I wasn't finding the time to write, and I didn't want to give up on my dream. It hurt me so badly that it made my writing problem worse, and there are times I feel like I still haven't recovered, "you should just quit" becoming a nagging intrusive thought I have to fight against. And to be honest, I don't think I've finished anything since then.
It's this kind of moment that solidifies my determination to always find kind ways to say things to people, even then being critical. Because you never know what is going on in their lives, and you never know what impact your words have.
I want to have a positive impact with my words.
November will always be National Novel Writing Month for me, even if the organization burned itself to death by making really bad decisions.↩