Today is the first day of November. The eighth, as you’re reading this, I guess [it got bumped due to election bullshit]. Normally, I’d be deep in my feelings about my writing challenge for the year or how I had to set it aside due to personal issues happening in my life. This year, though, is different. I’ve already written about how National Novel Writing Month has compromised their integrity in a number of unforgivable ways since the start of 2023’s NaNoWriMo, so I’m not going to rehash everything in too much detail, but suffice it to say that they sold out to Large Language Model garbage (still masquerading as “AI”), decried pushback against allowed generated text by saying that not allowing it would be classicist and ableist, doubled-down, and then fell apart as people withdraw from supporting the organization. All of which is terrible but doesn’t come close to the harm done that came to light in 2023–NaNoWriMo hadn’t been protecting its youngest writers, allowing them to be groomed by people who were representing the organization in location-based chats and writing groups, not doing anything about it until the community blew up about it in the middle of November that year. Both of these events were real shitshows, to put it lightly, and a lot of people, myself, included, have sworn off participating in any future NaNoWriMo events. I stand by the decision, of course, but I do find myself missing the excitement and distraction the yearly writing challenge usually brings me. I wasn’t aware of how much I relied on it to buoy my spirits as fall and its attendant early nights come crashing down on the Midwest.

I had thought, back when I first made the decision to no longer participate in NaNoWriMo, that I’d get some kind of writing group together for the month. I was only a week into my horrible sleep deprivation, you see, and at no point did I think I’d still be dealing with it as November started. I assumed it would be over by then, that I’d be finished with the medication I’ve been taking for skin issues that has the nasty side effects of joint aches and muscle pain, and that I’d be in a position to get at least a few people together for something. None of which has panned out. I don’t even have the time or energy to give myself a writing challenge of any kind other than my usual “try to maintain your blog buffer,” which I’m kind of failing at. I keep coming up with ideas, outlines, and even a chunky paragraph or two, but not finishing them until a day or two before they are supposed to go up. It’s frustrating to be too tired most days to make any headway on this, even AFTER I’ve stopped my sleep-disrupting attempt to finish Dragon Age: Inquisition before Veilguard came out. I mean, I’m less tired, but I’m not so well-rested that I can spend extra energy beyond the bare-minimum needed to keep my blog rolling along as it is right now (ending each day with two finished posts scheduled and three or four drafts with rough paragraphs and outlines only), and that’s even BEFORE the election day that will come up between writing this outline (and first two paragraphs, at least) and when this post will go up. I don’t know what state I’m going to be in this month and won’t until at least this post goes live, maybe longer. The election results are going to have a pretty big impact on that…

The whole reason I liked the event in the first place was because it gave me a challenge and a community. I eventually ramped up the challenge until it became absurd, dropped it back down to something more normal, and then have maintained that ever since. I don’t do it for the challenge any more. I haven’t in a while. I did it for the community, for the sense of doing something with a bunch of other people who are working toward the same goal I am. We might never see each other or interact much at all, but we were all pulling together regardless. We were unified even if we never spoke to each other. And, sometimes, those barriers vanished and you met people out in the world who did the same things you did. I connected with one of my neighbors in my apartment over our mutual appreciation for NaNoWriMo. It was a thing that could bring people together, to create a community where none existed before, and while that is still possible, it will take a lot more work without the framing of NaNoWriMo to build on. There’s a lot vulnerability that comes with writing communities, after all, and it easier (for me, at least) to take a risk on that vulnerability if I know the other people I’m with are just as dedicated to the act of writing as I am. I already struggle with finding ways to open up to new people in new situations, so how am I supposed to do that with the added layer of stress from exposing my writing to other people I don’t know? “But you do that on your blog all the time!” Sure, but none of you say anything to me about it. I am tossing words into a void here and rarely get anything tossed back. There’s a huge difference between exposing my emotional and intellectual self in a dark room where no one is watching me do it and doing so for the explicit purpose of getting commentary and feedback…

Honestly, I’m not really sure that this is still something I want. I’m solidly into my thirties now and while I love ago gave up the idle daydreams of making it big thanks to the stories I wrote, I find myself wondering more and more if the act of writing and the sense of accomplishment I derive from it is worth the stress and effort and emotional devastation as the world routinely proves how little it values the written word. The problem is that I define myself as a storyteller and writing is the primary way I do that, so I’m not sure how else I could get the fulfillment and feelings of accomplishment that I get from it. It’s not like I’ve got any other driving creative passions. I mean, I’d probably still write something, assuming I can ever dig myself out from underneath the heap of stress, exhaustion, and burnout I’m living in, but I’d probably stop this blog. Which, you know, isn’t a thing I’m going to be doing any time soon. After all, I’m going to need it in the coming years as I live through this next political era, depending on how next week’s election goes (as of writing this. You’re reading this post-election and have the benefit of hindsight, if nothing else). It’ll either be the place I continue to center myself or else it will become the ground from which I push back against the encroaching darkness. Neither one really leaves much room for contemplating leaving, though I’m sure each path includes routes that could end with me deciding to step back. I just don’t know yet [and, as of editing this the day before it goes up on November 11th, I still don’t know even with the benefit of hindsight].