So NaNoWriMo 2014 officially ended yesterday, and despite the completely glowing start that I had, I crashed and burned at the end, ending at only about 36K.

Now my actual goal for NaNoWriMo was 40K, which is 10K less than the official NaNo goal. Ending at 36K isn’t too bad, considering. Its also not bad because 36K is way better than 20, 15, 10 or just not writing at all. It really is.

So the question is: what happened?

Well, several things actually.

First off, I just got really busy. November is the month where Christmas starts to come. I don’t know if that happens all over the world but it definitely happens here. As soon as it hits November 1st, people get into holiday mode. In fact, as soon as I walked into my job on November 1st, the park was already part way decorated for Christmas. Now because of this, and that little forgotten holiday in between, Thanksgiving, I get really busy at work. Or so I’m learning. This past week alone…I had planned to catch up with Evie and Austin and get to that elusive 50K, but I just got so busy this week with the holiday and all the hours at work that I just didn’t have the time, or the energy, to finish.

But really…the most important reason why I didn’t finish was that…I really didn’t want to. I feel like…I don’t have an attachment to Evie and Austin the way I did, and still do, with Zoey and Ash. Its just not there. I find myself writing and hating everything that I’m writing. Its not just that I’m writing crappy in order to fix it later, I literally hate what I’m writing. It started to feel like I was writing a ten page paper on tapeworms or something. I didn’t care! I was forcing myself to write.

See, with The Awakened, even when I was writing really badly, I still wanted to write. I didn’t feel like I was forcing myself to write. I wanted to write about Zoey and Ash and the Awakened. I loved all of them, and even when I felt like I had to literally sit down and make myself write, I wasn’t forcing the story. The story unfolded a lot on its own. This one, even though its outlined, even though I even broke away from the outline at points, just felt SO forced. Like, the idea keeps seeming better in my head, less in the actual words on the page.

Now, I tried to write the story of Evie and Austin last year as well. Not during NaNo, however; I was writing it last summer, and I wasn’t feeling it then either. I put it aside for awhile because the story of The Awakened had hit me and I had just seen Set It Off and been massively effected by their songs, Dreamcatcher and Nightmare, and I put it aside. It wasn’t the story for me at the time and as time passes and I continue to try and put work in it, the more that I think maybe its a better idea than an actual novel.

So I failed technically in NaNoWriMo this month but I discovered a lot. I discovered maybe this baseball story is better in my head than on paper. Maybe it’ll never actually be written. I know authors are constantly saying that they have a lot of ideas and not all of them actually become anything. And I don’t think Evie and Austin are going to make it out of my head. Their names might because I love both of those names a LOT. Parts of the story might. There are definitely parts that I liked. And I still really want to write a twin story.

But I think what I want to focus on right now is this: getting back to the blog and reviewing books. Reading books. Editing The Awakened. Finding an agent for The Awakened. Writing the sequel. Those are my priorities. So it seems like I failed but I really didn’t. I just realized that the writing direction that I was going in was in the very wrong direction and now I feel like I’m back on the right path. Its going to take some time and some work but you sometimes have to fall into these holes in order to climb out and find a new path.

But I’d LOVE to hear about your NaNoWriMo, so tell me all about it in the comments!

Happy Writing!