FAWM 2011 - victory dance

At least to my mind, fourteen songs written in one month doesn't sound nearly as impressive as 50 thousand words. It especially doesn't sound as impressive as 135k--my NaNo for last year. And yet, with my just-under-one-day-early completion of FAWM, there's this warm little glow in my chest that says not only that I won, but that I accomplished what I set out to do, which was something fairly new and somewhat scary to me.


I hadn't really dabbled in original songwriting since my emo high school days, when fly rhymed with die far too many times to even pretend to be taken seriously. So, yes, I didn't write 28 songs in 28 days. I didn't take their suggested goal and blow it out of the water. But I did win, and right now, that's more than enough for me. Besides, my first year of NaNo, I only got 53k words, so just give me another year! :)

But really, to sound completely cheesy here, the real prize, as with NaNo, is what I created, what I get to keep when February is long over. I wrote some lyrics that I really like. I got inspired to pick up any number of musical instruments and make tunes for these songs. And this month, through a combination of FAWM and LTUE, I started writing seriously again.

Yesterday marks one week of writing at least 250 words in my novel every day. Yesterday I actually wrote well over a thousand words, both in my novel and a new story for my writing group's quarterly challenge. So this month really meant a lot more to me than just another writing challenge: I feel like for the first time since November that I can really call myself a writer.

And there's still one day left of February; let's see if I have any more songs left in me!


edit: I wrote one more just before midnight! Yay for slight over-achievement!

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Listening to: The Only Exception by Paramore. I gotta admit, this album is catchy. And I say this far too often, but I really identify with this song, especially the bridge.