NaNoWriMo :: NaNoWriMo Blog

"That's how NaNo 2007 felt, like a birth with the fetus being a seventy-five page labor of willpower and plain old Brooklyn stubbornness."

"The fantastic thing about willpower is that you don't know what it will accomplish before you set down to a task. Amassing your will is a surprising process, usually fraught with procrastination, aggravation and a number of other -ations that I need not go into. Needless to say, it comes out of nowhere, swallowing your time and energy and the byproduct is usually something amazing or wonderful. That's how NaNo 2007 felt, like a birth with the fetus being a seventy-five page labor of willpower and plain old Brooklyn stubbornness.

When NaNo came about in 2007, I was on the brink of bankruptcy. As a college student I simply hadn't had the time or the luck to find a job that would accommodate going to classes and making enough to survive. I managed to skate through thanks to the loving help of my family, but after a string of no-go jobs, I was trapped. I was taking fifteen credits in college, racing to the finish line of a bachelors degree, and I was fully sure I would never be able to survive the hole my finances had become. In my mind, everything was hopeless. After all, why go to all the trouble of getting a degree in film when everyone knew that only big-name people in Hollywood made money in film, and money was what I needed. What was the point of a degree if I couldn't pay my bills? What was the purpose of being creative then, if you couldn't put money towards credit card bills when necessary? I was trapped and sinking fast.

A job came out of nowhere in the last few days of October. It was a daunting retail position, probably the most challenging of my life, and it paid enough to get my life on track. The trouble was that it meant juggling nearly thirty-five hours of work a week with fifteen credits in college, plus any sort of social engagements. As I was just starting the position, a new co-worker reminded me that NaNo was coming up. I was sure there was no chance I would get to it. The fact is, NaNo was (in my mind) for people who had time! Still, I had to take a crack at it and for the first few days and weeks I stumbled and fell and tripped over a plot I was sure was trash. I just kept on chugging on days when I came home from work and my feet ached so terribly I couldn't take it anymore. It was with this sort of exhaustion in me that I got to the last week of NaNo with nearly twenty-five thousand words left. I wasn't going to make it.

Then I went through my realization: NaNo was created, not for those who had the time, but for those who didn't have the time. This was for those who couldn't find time to write, who lost track of their goal to put pen to paper, and who needed a boot-to-butt to get to the business of writing. With the scant time remaining, I carved out the twenty-five thousand, turning out the last 12,000 words in a matter of less than six hours. By the time I was finished, I didn't even remember how I'd written so much, but I'd conquered my own mountain in NaNo that November.

Now I'm still at the same job, still finishing out school, still busy, but that one push in 2007 got me to realize how hard it is to find the time to write... and how vastly rewarding it can be to actually do it. This year's going to be more of the same, only this time I'm taking eighteen credits at college while I try to train for a career in law enforcement in the future. Personally, I can't wait for the challenge."

—Shoshana Kessock

Shoshana is a two time NaNo winner (2006 and 2007), Brooklyn film student and writer, who works retail when she's not slaving away at being a gamer and storyteller.

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