I don’t know what sort of post this will be. My mind is in a weird space. This will be a combination post about (Camp) NaNoWriMo and mental health. I hope it will make sense, but I can’t guarantee that right now.

I love Camp NaNoWriMo. I loved when it had a website of its own. It allowed me to separate myself from the main event in November, but the uniqueness of Camp was that it allowed me to write something else. It didn’t have to be a novel of 50k words. It could be poetry, short stories, a novella. Whatever the fuck I wanted.

Before Camp NaNo, I’d never finished NaNoWriMo. Hell, I’d never finished a story, but nine years ago I learned about Camp NaNo. I learned the ways in which it could be personalised to the individual rather than the individual bending to the rigid schedule of November’s NaNoWriMo. I set a target of 30k and smashed it days early.

I also hated that story. I hated the characters. This wasn’t a faulty function of Camp NaNo; it was the function of wanting to finish a story. I wasn’t writing a story I wanted to be good. I wasn’t writing a story I intended to ever look at again. It was a story I wanted to finish. That’s it. I made the characters terrible to the point that I hated them and I kept writing to smite them.

Once I knew I could finish a story, I smashed NaNo that November. I didn’t finish the story, though. I just hit the words and left it. I did this a lot over the last few years. I’d write the 50k and my brain would stop producing the words. OR I’d start one project, get about 10k in and my brain would shift to a different story, so I wasn’t even writing 50k on one story. I’d write about 30-40k on another and left the first dangling.

Today is the first of April. For the last two weeks, maybe the last month, I’d had every intention of taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo. April is usually a bad one for me. I tend to get sick, busy with family birthdays, or just generally my mental health dips, and I don’t know what it is about having 30 days as opposed to the 31 in July. It simply doesn’t vibe with me.

I suspect the same is true in November. It’s weird, unexplainable. It’s a brain thing. My brain thing that I don’t understand. I do great the first week, my birthday rolls around when I inevitably take too many days off, and I lose control. There’s no coming back from that for me.

But I digress.

I stayed up last night, waiting for midnight. I talked about it in a discord I’m part of - others were taking part, too. I was excited. They were excited. The conversation faded out, I binged some episodes of Grey’s Anatomy after years of refusing to watch even one episode.

The closer midnight came, the less excited I felt. I started calculating how many words I’d need to write a day. If I wrote on the weekends it would be fine. 1k a day is what I always do, but in the last year - since I started treating writing like my job - I don’t write on the weekends. I calculated how many words I’d need to compensate for losing 8 days at the weekends. And it happened. It happens every year.

I got competitive.

Writing is not a competitive sport. I know this logically, but in the back of my mind all I can hear is a voice asking why I’m not doing more. Why haven’t I published yet? Why isn’t what I have written good enough to publish yet? It’s a throwback to school. I received a B, but why isn’t it an A? I received an A, but why wasn’t it a perfect A?

Every NaNo, regardless if it’s Camp or November, I update my word count obsessively. I do mean obsessively. Sometimes every five words. I see others writing several thousand words a day and I wonder why I can’t do it like them. Why can’t I churn out words like that? Why can I only write in 30-40 minute bursts before my thoughts tangle in my head like too many strings of yarn? Why do I write better on paper? Why, unless I’ve hit a really exciting bit, can I only manage 1k a day? Is it okay I only spend an hour or so writing a day to get that 1k? How am I going to be a real author?

Why am I not better at this?

This isn’t a fault of NaNoWriMo. It’s a fault in my mind. I need to stop marking my writing with these events. I need to accept 1k a day is what I can do with relative ease, and it’s better for me to have regular writing Monday-Friday than a month-long marathon.

I need to listen to my own advice, that writing is individual and to do what works for me. So, I won’t be participating in any NaNoWriMo events anymore if only for my mental health, but I absolutely support those who find NaNoWriMo works for them. I will cheer you on.