A year ago, if an aspiring writer would have told me “I don’t have time to do NaNoWriMo,” my immediate response would have been: “How many hours of TV do you watch in a day?” And if the answer was a positive integer greater than zero, then I’d say he or she doesn’t have the heart to be a writer.
So here I am, one year later, saying “I don’t have time to do NaNoWriMo this year.”
It’s not what you think, though. I’ve got plenty of other writing goals to hit by the end of the year, and quite frankly, I can’t put them on hold for 30 days to put together another rough draft of a novel. I’ve got one novel in the final stages that I’m preparing agent queries/synopsizes for and another that I’d like to start cleaning up as soon as the query letters for the first go out.
I’ve also got a dozen short stories that need to be finished, edited and submitted, as well as resubmitting any rejections of already pending works.
My point here isn’t to say “Hey look at me, I’m so busy, I have no time for your silly writing contests.”
Quite the contrary. The purpose of this post is to illustrate that you need prioritize all of your writing goals, and focus primarily on the ones that are the most important at the moment. In my case, it’s more important to prepare and clean up the novels I have finished than it is to write a new first draft in November.
And remember: it’s not whether or not you have “time,” that is important. What’s important is that the time you do have is spent doing whatever it takes to further your goals, not only in writing, but in all aspects of your life.
And next year, I’m sure that for me that goal will include participating (and finishing) NaNoWriMo.
