Getting On The NaNoWriMo Train Before I Lose My Way

Decided to use this year’s NaNoWriMo to work on my flash chapbook as well as that damn novel. I need the kick in the ass that this event provides. Even if I don’t reach the 50,000 goal…which I rarely do because it just sounds like half of that will just be garbage and who wants to commit to 25,000 words of garbage…I just need to give myself the space to write.

Let’s talk about yesterday. Yesterday was a weird day for me as a writer.

I went from reading this amazing article, “How to Unlearn Everything” by Alexander Chee, about how a writer deals with people who seek permission to write the other and how he dealt with finding his own voice as a person of color to reading an article, “A Writer’s World: How to Make It in Hawai’i” by Don Wallace, about Hawaii writers and how unsuccessful they are in being mainstream (among other things).

The dissonance this caused is still affecting me today.

Of course, all writers dream of being published, of being recognized, of maybe making a living at writing. The article about Hawaii almost made me give up. It dealt more with the idea of the industry and how no one except an exceptional few can be successful. That the local scene will probably just stay local with no nationwide recognition of the art that Hawaiian writers produce.

It made me pause. It made me wonder. Because my writing is based in Hawaii, it made me think that maybe this is why I can’t get published. But that can’t be true. I have been published. My work in all its Hawaiian-ness is out in the world. It’s just not monetized. I am not Kiana Davenport. I am not Kaui Hart Hemmings. I am just me, writing my words, my point of view.

I don’t want to lose my way. I don’t want to think that what I write isn’t important or good or unworthy. But I tell you what… I am getting really tired of pepping myself up and keeping myself going. I just gotta keep focused on the writing and let everything else sort itself out.