For quite some time, Novemember has been novel-writing month for me. I have done NaNoWriMo for over a decade, and in the latter years of doing it, I became a NaNoRebel instead because I was bored with the original premise (writing 50,000 words in the month). I’ll be honest–I can easily write 50,000 words in a month. I used to write two-thousand words a night every night, which took me roughly three hours or less.
Two years ago (I think it was), NaNoWriMo was accused of not doing enough when a moderator was purportedly grooming children in the teen forums and luring them to fetish websites. NaNoWriMo organizers/leaders did not react well at all, and they dragged their feet on doing anything concrete about it.
Last year, they made some very ill-formed remarks in support of AI for disabled writers/writers with disabilities (they were widely condemned by said community), and they were called out for their ableism. They shut down the last day of March this year (2025).
I felt no remorse to see them go. In addition to their reacting badly in these two major situations, I had just outgrown them. I did not see any reason to not start a novel before the first of November or not to edit or to count my words. I am grateful that they got me in a groove back when I was doubting my ability as a writer, but I did not need them by the time they shut down.
I will say that I’ve had a big writer’s block since I had my medical crisis. I have tried to write since then, but it’s been a struggle. Not these posts, but writing, ah, let’s just call it fiction for now. It’s not strictly fiction, but that’s close enough.
The problem isn’t that I don’t have an idea–I have one. It’s changed and shifted in the four years since my medical crisis, but the core is still there. The problem is that I write about thirty thousand words (or more), and they just lie flat on the page. They don’t dance and glimmer as they should; they just stubbornly sit there.
I have said many times that I consider myself the conduit for the characters I create. I’m not writing their dialogue and actions–they are. I have had characters simply refuse to do what I want them to do if it’s not what they want to do.
With my current project (well, current as in the one I want to work on, but I have not touched it since last November), I have been calling it ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ in my head. Why? Because I want it to be part memoir, part murder mystery, part romance, part comedy, part noir spoof, and part homage to Bloodborne. Oh, and all cohesive. Or not. I want it to work, but it doesn’t have to be cohesive, exactly.
I’ve always been weird. It’s only been relatively recently that I’ve figured out (with the help of a friend) some big reasons why. It’s not because my brain is broken, which is what I’ve thought for decades. Well, the mainstream and normies would probably consider it broken, but it’s that I’m neuroatypical.
I suspected I was not completely neurotypical a few decades ago, but I didn’t have the words for it. This was before ADHD and autism were talked about in public. At all. When I first suspected it, I was focused on ADHD because I could see how I fit some of the symptoms. Not all of them or even most of them, but several of them.
More recently, though, my friend gently pushed that perhaps I was autistic. I knew my brother was (and I was the one who opened his eyes to his own autism) and other family members were, but it never occurred to me that I might be as well. I listed all the reasons I wasn’t to her, and she sent me an online test. She told me to take it without masking, and…I couldn’t. Because I’ve been my mother’s emotional support person since I was eleven, it was automatic.
What do I mean? It means that I’m hyperaware of other people’s emotions and am always adjusting to what they want/need. I also learned that autistic people are actually very sensitive to other people’s emotions–they just don’t always know what to do with it. Oh, and the stereotype of an autistic person is based on, of course, a white boy.
Once I realized all that (and dug deeper into autism because that’s what I do), then I could see how I fit the definition of an autistic person who was not a white dude. To a T. I mask so much it’s second nature to me.
I mean, hell. Look at this post, which is very much my style. Meaning, I start at point A and end up at Omega, while crossing through a dozen different alphabets. I always meant to get back to point A, but it’s 50/50 whether I will or not. Actually, it’s more likely I won’t than I will. I’ll be real with it. Once my mind goes down a different road, it’s not going back. That’s the ADHD in me.
Damn. Why did I go down this road? I am not sure. But I will say that it makes it difficult to concentrate sometimes. I used to be able to write easily, but it’s not so easy now. I’m sure part of it is my medical crisis. I escaped from it mostly unscathed, but there are a few lasting impacts from it. One of them is my memory going kaput. I’m pretty sure another is a hit to my attention–which can be spotty at best. I mean, at times, I have hyperfocus, but at other times, my attention is scattered all over the place.
Back to November being writing month.
Even with NaNoWriMo being gon, November will always be my month for writing a novel. I have done it every year–even last year (I think?), and I want to try it again. Since I’m more a rebel, though, I will do it my own way. I like the idea of writing 2,000 words a day (very comfortable for me), so I’ll keep that.
I think this week, I’ll do a brain dump. I don’t do schedules or outlines, but I do do brain dumps. That’s when I write down everything in my head that’s related to the current project. In the past, I would have much of the novel written in my head before I began actually typing it out. I like to edit as I go, too, which is not recommended.
The last few years, though, I have just struggled in general. I knew what I wanted to do and had the general outline of the novel, but I could not put the pieces together correctly. I have the beginning for the novel written in my mind, along with mini-sketches for the three main characters. I know what the main mystery is going to be, but I don’t yet know the perp (and I usually do).
I think I’ll just have to write it all out and let it be shit. I’m usually resigned to that, but I wasn’t able to do it the last few years. I got discouraged and just quit, rather than write my way through it. That may be my bigger goal this year–just to write every day, no matter what. I’ll have to take it past the end of November because that’s when I lose steam.
I’ll write more about this tomorrow.