The Month of Words {NaNoWriMo}

Once a year, during the lovely month of November, writers all over the world get together and write.

Nation Novel Writing Month: also known as NaNoWriMo

50,000 words in a month.

Roughly an eighty-eight page novel.

Cramming 1600+ words in per day isn't an easy task, nor is it taken lightly. You must be dedicated, willing, and slightly insane to take on such a challenge.

So while it sounds like a lot of work, and it is, it is also an experience that one won't soon forget.

This year, 2014, I decided barley three days before it started that I was going to participate.

Did I not tell you that one must be slightly insane to do it? Indeed.

I skimmed through pinterest looking for ideas for this new novel, trying to figure out what on earth I was going to write about. I can't remember the pictures I was looking at, or the thoughts going through my head, but in a few minutes I had decided. I was going to write about what I knew and what I didn't know. The emotions I had experienced and the unknown I hadn't.

Heather Byrd is one of those people who clutched a dream through the years of High School and one that pursued it. Now, she's living it: the dream of being a writer in New York.

Heather is sentimental: "I do so love Autumn. (I refuse to call it Fall: it is the most unromantic name of the season anyone could ever think of!) The leaves are starting to turn and I’m squealing inside. How could anyone dislike Autumn? Its so beautiful from the leaves to the sweaters."

She's passionate: “I still do want to write. Its a beautiful art, and its a part of me. Especially writing about people, as of course you know. Humans are complex creatures and I think that they are misunderstood way to often... And they need people to remind them that life isn’t all about them, its about a planet of people working alongside each other to make this world a better place.”

But she's also confused: “The thought about my future. The thought that maybe I did wrong in moving out here so fast upon finishing my degree. It was always a dream of mine to move here, and I love it don’t get me wrong, But maybe it was..” Heather frowned a little, “...impractical, I guess?”

And scared: "What am I doing May? Spending four years getting a degree and then moving to New York to write for a living? That sounds insane. How is one suppose to make a living off that?" 

This book isn't complicated. It doesn't have a major plot of people saving the day or others dying in heart-wrenching death scenes. Its a story of a girl who's passionate about life and confused about her purpose.

I wrote and wrote as much as I could, and while I didn't get even close to the goal of 50-thousand words, I enjoyed the experience and push it gave me every day. 

I will be continuing to write Heather's story and hopefully finish it. The characters have all become dear to me: I can't leave they're story untold. 

Enjoy your December, my lovelies.

<3 Eva

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She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power 

she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.

-Holly Black