NaNoWriMo 2017
I've been wanting to do NaNoWriMo for a couple years now, so I finally decided to do it this year for the first time. I thought I would have the time to get it done this year. But I didn't know what I had in store not long after it began. I'm become so used to things not working out for me and unfortunately, completing NaNoWriMo was no exception.
It got off to a great start for about a week and half. I was reaching the average word count each day of 1,667 words and if I didn't, I would catch up the next day or so. It looked promising until my mom got hit with a flare up of sciatica, which she is still dealing with now. It started out okay until it got progressively worse after about a week after the initial start-up. It became where she was able to get around okay, followed by not being able to walk at all (and we're still working on that). What it meant for me was that I gained more responsibilities than ever, with taking care of her, the house, doing NaNoWriMo, trying to get ready for a craft fair for this month, and trying to take care of myself. It left me feeling more tired than ever and there were days where I didn't have a moment to spare. The thing about sciatica is that you just don't know when a flare-up will occur and I had no idea that we would still be dealing with all of this as of this writing. She went to urgent care the first day, where she was prescribed a muscle relaxer and motrin. The following week, we ended up at the ER due to the excruciating pain while we were attempting to get her to an orthopedist appointment, but she was given a lot of medicine and got sent home with oxycodone, Tylenol, and more motrin . It was approaching Thanksgiving and it appeared to be getting somewhat better, but that would be short lived. It still really wasn't getting better and she started getting hallucinations from the narcotic. A couple days ago, we took her to an orthopedist with much pain at that. He only told us to keep giving the Tylenol and motrin; he didn't want to really prescribe anything stronger because he didn't want anything to mess with her heart problems. It hasn't helped much and now we're stuck at the same place.
When she started getting worse, I started having trouble keeping up with NaNoWriMo. While selfishly I want to blame my mom for having it happen when I was trying to focus on myself for a change, I don't blame her because it was out of her, as well as my, control.
I'm pretty sure by now you know what I'm about to say. I did not complete the 50,000 word count, but I did manage to write 41,210 words during November (I did write a bit more, but I wasn't able to get them in time, but it still wouldn't have surpassed 50,000).
My goal wasn't necessarily to reach the 50,000 word count. My main goal was to get myself back in the habit of writing every day. I did accomplish that by managing to write most days out of the month. Based on what I was dealing with, I am proud of myself for reaching that far and I'm proud that I went after a goal. While I do wish I could have reached the 50,000 word count goal, I reached other goals that made it worth it.
I am planning on doing NaNoWriMo again next year and hopefully it will turn out better.
~Meg~
