Another November, gone

And yes, I’m a NaNoWriMo winner once more. National Novel Writing Month is becoming an annual event for me, a challenge accepted by novelists around the world, to write at least 50,000 words in a new project. Does this result in publishable material? Are manuscripts completed successfully based on these rapidly-churned out piles?

I know some writers have sold the books they begun during NaNoWriMo. So far, I haven’t. (Psst: that happens in 2012 and then things get going.)

But here’s the way I look at it: every successful endeavor is the result of hours and hours of practice. 10,000 hours, to be exact, if you believe Malcolm Gladwell. I read somewhere that this translates in novel terms to about a million words.

A million words.

Think about that. I’ve had, roughly speaking, about 400,000 words published, so far in my career. That’s, say, 100 articles and essays, a handful of short stories, seven short non-fiction books and one novel.

But I’ve also written a lot that hasn’t sold. Journal entries by the trunk-load (that will NEVER be read by anyone, except possibly some tabloid hack once I’m famous – and very. very dead.) Two more complete novel manuscripts. One almost-complete novel manuscript. A half-dozen half-done novel manuscripts. A handful of novel synopses that may one day turn into something. Or not. Some really bad poetry. A few blog posts.

Let’s say that translates t0 another 400,000 words. That puts me at 800,000 words. NaNoWriMo 2010 puts me at 850,000 words, which means I’m 150,000 words away from that one million mark.

There’s no guarantee, of course, that hitting that magic number will suddenly heave me onto the New York Times bestsellers list, or that I’ll even sell something.

But each project teaches me some tiny thing I didn’t know before. Every manuscript I thrash out through to completion earns me new skills I didn’t have before. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell the stories I yearn to set down on paper, they way I imagine they could be written. And even if I do, there’s nothing to say someone will pay me to publish them.

All I can do is keep pushing forward with my craft, practicing discipline, exercising my imagination, enjoying my creativity.

NaNoWriMo helps me do that.