November: A month of stress and delight in writing (#IWSG)

I just finished NaNoWriMo. For you non-writers (a/k/a normal people) out there, NaNoWriMo, affectionately known as NaNo, is National Novel-Writing Month, a worldwide phenomenon in which millions of writers try to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Free investment tip: buy stock in coffee companies before November. Alcohol and cigarette companies too.

But I digress.

A subgroup of NaNo participants are known as NaNo Rebels. We bust our butts all month like the “regular” NaNos, but we do something other than write 50K words of a brand-new novel. In my case, I committed to spending as much time revising a previous NaNo project as it would have taken me to write 50K words. How do I know I succeeded? I use Online Writing Log to track my writing, so I went back to 2019, when I last “won” NaNo the traditional way, and figured out how many hours it took me to write 50K words, then calculated my words written per minute (spoiler alert: it was 20). This year, I credited myself 20 words for every minute I spent revising.

Why yes, I am insane. How nice of you to notice.

Anyway, I revised for a total of 2508 minutes (almost 42 hours) in the month of November, the equivalent of writing 50,160 words. Go me! And that experience sets me up nicely to respond to this month’s question for the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop, which is: In your writing, what stresses you the most? What delights you?

Before I get into that, let me put in a plug for the IWSG. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to writing, and then we visit the blogs of our fellow members and read and comment on their IWSG posts. I’ve been participating in the IWSG for over two years now. The blog hop, along with the Goodreads book group, Twitter feed, and Facebook group, [links] are a great source of support and encouragement in this weird, lonely writing journey. If you write, consider linking up with us.

And thanks to this month’s co-hosts, PJ Colando, Diane Burton, Louise – Fundy Blue, Natalie Aguirre, and Jacqui Murray.

OK, back to this month’s question, which I love, because writing is a weird blend of stress and delight, kind of like dysfunctional families. Maybe that’s why I write. Unhealthy family dynamics seem to be typical training grounds for writers. But I digress.

So let’s talk about stress first.

How is writing stressful?

Let me count the ways (or at least bullet point ’em):

• Insecurity (hey, there’s a whole blog hop named for this one). My writing sucks. I suck, too. Why am I doing something I suck at? That sentence sucks. That word sucks. That character over there? He sucks too.
• Deadlines. Crap, that contest closes in 3 hours, and my story still sucks.
• Vulnerability. If anyone reads this story, they’ll know I suck.
• Lack of self-discipline. It’s sunny outside. I want to play in the garden. Writing sucks.
• Rejection: Evidence that I suck.
• Interruptions. This scene is finally starting to flow, and you’re interrupting me with an arterial bleed? Slap a tourniquet on that arm and drive yourself to the ER. You suck.
• Distractions. Couldn’t you call the ambulance after I finished this scene? I have a deadline, you know. Lights and sirens suck.

So yeah, writing is stressful. So why do we do it? Because it’s also delightful!

How is writing delightful?

• External validation. I won that contest! My story got accepted! Maybe I don’t suck. (Note: one of my stories did get accepted–for a Christmas horror anthology due out next month. Woo hoo!!)
• A way to channel emotions. I want to kill someone, but prison sucks. [opens Scrivener and starts typing]
• A creative outlet. Humans have longed to make things for as long as there have been humans. (And of course, there was always someone on hand to tell us our creations sucked–as Mel Brooks presents so well.)

• And the greatest delight of all: magic. Sometimes when I sit down in front of the computer or a blank sheet of paper, the words flow. Ideas come, characters start talking, I start writing, and it’s as though I’m plugged into some great cosmic source of truth and creativity. That’s usually when someone interrupts me–which sucks.

How about y’all? If you write (or create in another way), what delights you? What stresses you? And what keeps you going when you’re stressed and frustrated?