Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
I spent >10 Novembers of my life doing NaNoWriMo. https://nanowrimo.org/
I started when I was much too young to have the discipline or, indeed, ability, to actually carry it through. But I was very determined, and kept it at year on year. Finally I did crack the 50k mark. After doing that twice, I now feel that I've gotten all I can out of NaNoWriMo, and I don't do it any more. (Semi-related: I also was the city organizer for this in my city in 2019. November 2019 was one of the better months of my life.)
From when I was a teenager, it was always my goal to get something actually published. I achieved this in late 2022 by having a non-fiction essay published in an anthology about my city. It's a real book, published by a real publisher. You can get it at Barnes & Noble, and the library has 20+ copies of it, and my name is in there. I was paid exactly $20.00 for it; I put the check in a little frame, which sits in my office on a bookcase now. I would like to publish a novel some day, but having now ticked the "get published" box, this isn't something that keeps up at night anymore.
With regards to the act of writing: there are long periods of pain, and relatively short periods where it feels amazing. For me - and note that I primarily write fiction - the really difficult part is going from the state of "I have no active project going" to "I have a project and I'm well into it." I go on all kinds of false starts and dead-end paths, and it's quite discouraging. Furthermore, as I've gotten older and reached a rather stable mid-career professional phase, I actually find myself a bit starved for ideas sometimes. This would have been unimaginable in my 20s. However, when I actually managed to get the ball rolling, there are few feelings to compare with finishing a passage after which you can think, "That says what I meant it to say. I've conveyed this perfectly." It's a lot like playing golf: you put up with all the shanks and hooks because of the occasional perfect strike.
As I once said to a writing buddy of mine: I've gone through periods where I've tried to stop. I recognize that there are other hobbies I can pursue which don't come with any frustration. There are things that I am better at, than at writing. I'm probably more talented at tennis; if I put as much time into tennis as I do writing, I could be winning the local wee amateur tournaments and things. But I always come back to it. I seem to have wired my brain into that mold over many years, and now I just feel bad about myself if I don't log a few hours at the desk every couple of days.
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