At any given time I am both – the most trustworthy person you will ever meet and the one person who can’t keep her mouth shut or her nose out of it. Call it the writer in me – but in other words, I always have a story to tell, and I am always willing to tell it – but at the same time – if you ask me to say nothing, I will. With one exception – my rules of speech follow those of a therapist. I will not say a word – UNLESS you are a harm to yourself or others. [and I find this to be a fair clause]

But, my friends, I do not come to you today because I have a secret to tell – or a story, but rather to say that I have a secret that I cannot tell. A new project that will take up my free time until the month of November has met its end.

This month, like in the past I am participating in National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. In this, I will attempt to finally finish a book or – at the very least- a draft, in 31 days. In other words, I have 31 days to write 50,000 words – and I am only 11,000 in on day 8 – aka – I am already behind…

So at this point, you may be thinking one of three things:

1. Rachel, why do I care?
2. Why are you wasting your word count time on this blog (not a waste)
3. Get to the point

well to #1 I say – if you’re a writer, a reader or a friend, you love me so shut up – #2 it is not a waste because I have some advice to share that will be seen below – and #3 here it is

The other day I got a piece of Nano Mail and while I never read my messages on there, I decided to change habits. To my most pleasant surprise, there was this quote among the advice and it is something that has both intrigued me and shown me that I need to change the way I treat myself, my dreams and my writing. It read :

Resist the urge to tell friends and family your story. I know it’s hard because you want to talk about it and they’re (sometimes) interested in hearing about it. But writers have a dirty little secret: We are mainly motivated by our desire for people to experience our stories. We want an audience. We need it.

Telling your story to friends verbally satisfies that need for an audience, and it diminishes your motivation to actually write it. So make a rule: The only way for anyone to ever hear about your stories is to read them. You can still give it to them chapter by chapter—so you get the sweet, sweet external validation that you crave during the process. But no telling the story outside the pages. – Andy Weir

The above quote has since inspired me to do something I rarely do with my writing, keep my mouth shut.

I realized that in telling people my stories all these years I have eliminated the need to write it down. Which explained why – despite my only goal in life since sophomore year of high school (other than finding the love of my life because media is a sham that has conned me into thinking my life is a rom com) was publishing the next great American novel. Or at the very least – the next great Rachel Novel.

Anyway – I know I lost my flow but to all you writers out there, I hope this helps and I hope you don’t lose your story. Right now I don’t have time to make the blog pretty but I do have a book to write!

We’ve got 23 days left in this year’s challenge so let’s go for the gold!