So this is my third year going into this. I am both excited and slightly bitter.
Bitter?!
Yes, bitter. I'm not going to have any friends to cheer me on. It's that whole academia/fun/you-know-what-you-should-really-be-doing kind of conundrum. The people who know that I write think I'm insane. Scientists don't write. They're supposed to be chained to the lab bench. (However, if my hobby had been mountain biking, everyone would be totally excited. Around here, mountain biking is sexy. Writing isn't.)
I can't coerce other people to do this. I'm at one of those, you know, major universities, and it's sort of foolhardy to divert someone from their studies for something that is both fun and hard only to see them crash and burn. I don't want to be responsible for that. And there's also the air of pretentious snobbishness that completely intimidates me. Maybe that makes me a coward. But at least I'm a safe coward.
This year's Nano novel is also going to be placed online as I write it. It's more to keep myself on track. No one paid attention to the novels the previous year. Hardly anyone commented on them out of their own volition. Almost no one actually read my work. I posted copiously on the forums the previous years, but did anyone care? No. I don't expect anyone this year to follow my progress either.
I have to admit, I feel really jealous when another Nano novelist posts something about participating in Nanowrimo and then gets a whole flurry of comments by people who are dying to read their work. Where's my recognition? When someone asks me what I did during November and I reply, "I wrote a 50,000 word novel." And they respond with, "That's impressive!" I'm not mollified. I don't feel like a writer who has done her job. I feel like a four-year-old who has been studiously ignored while I try to show off my fingerpainting.
