NaNoWriMo Day 5: A Royal November

Royals baseball is over for 2015.

The parade has come and the crowds have gone.

Memories were made. A championship was won. My home, my city came together in a way like I’ve never experienced.

In 2014, the Kansas City Royals lost the World Series in Game 7 against the San Francisco Giants on October 29th. I was in Augusta, Georgia for work and scribbled my NaNoWriMo outline notes at a table at Buffalo Wild Wings with a crowd that barely noticed the World Series was happening. I was nervous for the impending November because I didn’t feel ready. I felt consumed by October fall ball.

In a city I didn’t love, with a few colleagues I barely knew, I watched my team fall heart-breakingly short of a world championship we’d yearned for in 29 years of [mostly] bad baseball. We wanted the crown, and we watched another city take it from us.

I finished NaNoWriMo 2014 with just over 50k words. It was my third NaNoWriMo and my third win, but I was heartbroken during most of November. I did get a full November, though. I may have scribbled frantic notes for a mostly useless outline in a notebook I wouldn’t know where to find now, but I was able to start writing my novel on November 1st without many distractions. I threw myself into that novel because there was nothing else to throw myself into.

This year, the Royals WON THE WORLD SERIES! In Game 5, down by 2 runs against the New York Mets. In the top of the 9th we scored two miraculous runs to tie it up, and in the twelfth we scored five more to take the crown we knew we deserved. The one we missed last year.

That was on November 1st.

It almost seems like a lifetime ago. It was less than a week from the time I’m writing this.

We’ve had late night watch parties, parades, celebrations that are, potentially, once-in-a-lifetime events take place in Kansas City. Excuses are excuses in my book, but I am willing to concede that Royals baseball has made it an extremely hard first few days of NaNoWriMo (in Kansas City…)

I wouldn’t trade it for the world, of course.

I guess the point of all of this is that this October and November has been one of the most exciting, gut-wrenching, heart-pounding falls of my entire life. And then NaNo started. If I could set up life in a perfect bubble, the Fall Classic and NaNoWriMo would not coincide. Perfect is relative, though, and I’m not sure I want a perfect life. Perfection is boring writing, and a perfect life gives me no inspiration.

What I’m taking from the experience is a lesson the Royals taught me: be relentless. Fight! Never give up, never back down, never look away when you’re backed into a corner. Believe. Do work and make it hard work.

It’s day 5. I’m behind in my word count. But I’m from Kansas City, a Royal town. I’m a comeback kid who’s learned from the best comeback kids in all of baseball, maybe all of time.

I’ll win this Fall Classic. I’ll take that halo.

 

1 Comment

  • Woohoo, go Royals! I really love the parallels with their fighting spirit to win the crown and us fighting to win NaNo. Never give up until the 12th inning! :D Although is it me, or would it have been more fitting for it to be the 11th inning so we could make 11th hour jokes? Hehe.

    Good luck on your novel!

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