Community Discussion:

[writingvixen.livejournal.com]

I love how your minds think. Oh if you aren't participating in our community discussion posts, you are MISSING out. The people here are lovely and wonderful and so, so wise.

Today's topic is going to be a little heavy and I do hope we all approach it with sensitivity and honesty. But I know this community. I know its members. I have no fear that you can tackle this with class and speak truth over the group.

Unfortunately November doesn't put life on hold, even if we'd want it to. We're chained to our computers, trying our hardest to write our novels and sometimes our friends and family just don't get it.

And it's hard.

We want to be there for them and give them attention, but ... hello, novel here! Our characters need our time, our energy. We're living for 50 people this month! So...

how do you do it? How do you walk the delicate balance of real life and writing life? How do you pound out 50K and keep your friends and family happy? How do you convey to them that you NEED alone time this month? Have you ever lost a friend because of NaNo? Let's talk about the ugly side of our 50k journey into creativity: our non writing lives.

Comments

[myself-or-not.livejournal.com]

I told a few people, including my parents about it the first time I did NaNo, because I was still living with them and tended to stay in my room instead of hanging out in the rest of the house. Everyone's been (or pretended to be, at least) quite interested in the idea. I didn't have that many real-life friends and didn't really go out of my house except to go to school, so at least I was doing something instead of mindlessly surfing the internet or watching tv. What birdcageletters said: it helped me too.

I have never told my real-life friends whenever I was doing NaNo, though. I don't exactly know why.

One time I never managed to write more than a few paragraphs because I was an exchange student and didn't really want to take over the family computer for hours, on top of having massive unrelated problems with my host family at the time. Like caught up on me hard that year.

This year, I don't know if I'll tell people but if I do it'll probably be once I've reached a few thousands and therefore know that I'm not going to give up one more time. I'm a university student so I have very few hours of classes, and when I'm home I usually stay in my room quite a lot, so it won't be a problem. I'm worried about depression having kicked in last month, though, but it's another story...

I'm looking forward to the ride, I remember how focused and happy it made me that one time I reached the 50k. Maybe I need that this year more than usual? Anyway, back to the point: I've never lost a friend over NaNo simply because I have wayyy too much time on my hands that I usually never use except for procrastination. So yay, free time put to good use!