NaNoWriMo 2016: Dammit

 Well... uhm... okay look, this time it did not go as planned. I actually had a good start the first week or so. Kinda like last year, where I was thrown off by illness and the starting of my new job, but I was able to make a comeback that I was quite proud of.

Not this time, sadly.

basically me by month's end

First off, I will be blunt and say that Trump becoming the president-elect bummed me out something serious. I mean, what the hell do you do when you did as much as you could to make sure the asshole didn't get elected and he "won"? It turns out I wasn't the only one, there were a lot of writers I followed on Twitter that were depressed. Even Stephen King had to take a break from Twitter.

Then slowly but surely, more people I followed revealed they were upset about what happened. They were concerned for family and friends, angry at those who voted and/or were reacting by being horrible human beings (well, more so than usual), and wanting to do something good (I promise I'll address this more in an upcoming entry on what I'm thinking about doing...).

Tweets after the election were outpourings of love and awareness, even a few speaking to those who created art to get ready and be more empowered to create more than ever. In dark times such as these, art will flourish, speak for the voiceless, and bring us a measure of joy when we think there is none left. It was those tweets that got me to think of coming back to the projects and also to do NaNoWriMo every year until otherwise indicated (I was thinking of calling this time as my last).

While I did not return to the projects, I learned a valuable lesson: do not do multiple projects during NaNoWriMo. Just focus on one! I ran into a similar issue in 2014, but it didn't sink in until this time.

actual footage* of me trying to write later in the month...
*not actual footage

After somewhat recovering from post-election malaise, I got smacked with an awful, ass-kicking head and chest cold. It was a perfect storm of WTF that took up most of my last days as a twenty-something. The cold delayed my initial appointment to get my tattoo, which was on the 18th (it changed to the 22nd). On top of all that, I also got so wicked drunk that I was violently ill for most of the night (also learned watching Interstellar drunk is not a good idea, despite that it was a fantastic movie). Needless to say that November was not a month in my favor.

But now empowered to keep creating, I vow to keep doing NaNoWriMo every year and to get back to my project (in this case, Dolls) next month so it can be done by New Year's Eve. Despite the setbacks (aw, that's cute, "setbacks" is being nice...), I did get over 15K on Dolls and it's getting close to being finished. So not all was lost nor underachieved.

Bottom line is that whenever craziness throws lemons at you, make lemonade and not invite craziness to your awesome lemonade brunch 'cause it can go f*** itself.