It’s April 7th, which means that one week of NaPoWriMo is O-VAH! I am stunned with both shock and pride to be able to say that I am currently seven for seven. This seems like a good time to log some reflections.

Last year, the first week of NaPoWriMo found me flailing a bit, but still excited and energized. This year, the first week of NaPoWriMo found me feeling a feeling that can best be described, as most feelings can, through a macro — in this case, a faildog:

Yes, yes, yes. That is very much it: face pressed against the bars with my eyes closed, with the word “FAIL” in large white letters just above my right ear.

There are two reasons for this.

The first reason is that I felt terribly, horribly, terribly out of practice when it comes to the whole poem-ing business. My poor poetry notebook reflects this: though I do have an astounding amount of notes on the medicinal benefits of Alehoof and early modern beliefs about hoot owls for my Witch Project, the population of new poems has dwindled as of late. Regretfully, my last full draft was written on February 20th, and January 28th before that.

Though this fact shames me to no end, I confess because this leads to reason two: the poem population dwindled mostly because I told myself that I just Did Not Have the Time. NaPoWriMo, however, has shown me that this is nothing more than an excuse: I have the time now, so I had the time before — I just wasn’t making enough time for my poetry. Fail.

This lesson is a hard lesson, but one I needed to learn. And I am learning another good thing, which is that it’s a good thing that it’s true, what they say about bicycles — you never forget. Now that I’ve been back on the bike for a week, the poems are easier to write. I’m not quite flying downhill with my hands off the handlebars, crying “wee!” for all of the neighbors to hear, but I’m beginning to coast comfortably without training wheels.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about NaPoWriMo, for me, is that the sheer force of production forces one to face one’s greatest fears about or in their writing. For me, this is the fear of writing Very Bad Drafts, even though I know that it is often absolutely necessary to write Very Bad Drafts to get the The Draft Which Works Well. The thing that I’m learning is that perhaps the most dangerous thing for a writer to do is to think of the Very Bad Drafts as failures. A Very Bad Draft, as unpublishable as it may be, is more of a triumph than a failure: how else will you ever get comfortable enough to say what most needs to be said? How else will you learn?

So, regardless of the outcome, NaPoWriMo? WIN.

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