A Downside to NaNoWriMo?

Don’t get me wrong, I love NaNoWriMo. I’ve been participating on and off since it first began. I think it’s great to help kick-start a novel project, especially for those who would never have started one in the first place.

For me, however, there’s a side effect … and I wonder if I share it with other writers out there: After forcing myself to crank out over 50,000 words in one month, for quite a while afterwards I have no desire to write. At all.

I don’t work on manuscripts only in November. I work on them all year around. It’s what I do. Except now … I need a vacation from my manuscripts.

I seem to remember this happens every time, and every November I seem to forget and jump in again. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that I’ve written on this same subject before. I’ll have to go back and check after I hit publish.

I would love to take a writing vacation. I would love to give up writing fiction altogether. Imagine that! All that free time to do mindless things, like play video games all night long (which I did last night), or get caught up on all that TV I never watched. Sometimes I really wish I could do that.

Alas, it’s never going to happen. I’ve been working on these stories for so long, thinking about the characters, collecting traits, plots, and ideas, that I can’t stop. It’s a compulsion. Fortunately for me it’s something I usually enjoy — I do it for me.

But for the next few weeks at least I’m going to take a vacation.