by Julie L.F. Cruz (planet_telex)

Joining NaNoWriMo for the first time last year made for one of the most memorable (and busiest!) months in my gap year, 2007. I’d graduated high school a year early, and was lucky enough to have parents who actually allowed me to take a gap year to recover from the burnout of studying in Philippine Science High School. I spent early 2007 being the awesomest bum ever — never getting bored despite the free time, baking, shopping, getting my nails done, and most notably, writing: I’d penned six episodes of my own television drama series, Mixology (best pitched as RENT meets Cheers meets Grey’s Anatomy) over the span of two weeks.

I found out about the National Novel Writing Month from a fellow fan fiction writer online, and I figured, piece of cake! I had no school, no previous commitments, just free time 24/7.

And then November began.

All these events started popping up one by one on my schedule: meet-ups with friends, my alma mater’s school fair, nightly YM conferences, write-ins that weren’t really write-ins (I’m mostly to blame for that one). I’d gotten this horrible job as an IT writer/researcher for an online creative content company which I absolutely detested (fellow NaNo-er Mark liked to refer to my relationship with this job as “battered girlfriend syndrome,” and I reckon he was probably right) which I quit, came back to, and then quit again. Not to mention full marathons of Brothers & Sisters and Popular. Days would go by where I wouldn’t write anything for my novel at all because I was too busy doing something else, or I wasn’t in the mood, or I was just plain lazy. The days added up, and on November 29th, I was only halfway there, with 25,000 words to go.

I finished it in that last day, thankfully, but that’s not the important part. Over the course of four weeks, in addition to my very own novel, I’d gained new friends whom I still get together with for movies and theater shows (Altar Girlz, go!), and I made myself a more active participant of NaNoWriMo than I expected I would be. I was the unofficial Events Coordinator, planning gimiks under the guise of productive write-ins where nobody really wrote, just chatted about their personal lives, opinions and crushes, then complained about writer’s block. I even volunteered to compile and print out the Philippine NaNoWriMo 2007 Anthology, a nice memento of the craziness of the past year. (Contact me to claim your copy! P250 lang!)

Even though I’m more than twice as busy now, with a nice, cushy gig at HSBC, I’d still do it all over again, even at the risk of driving myself insane. And I hope that you’ll all take that chance, too. Life’s full of so many inspirations for my next novel, tentatively titled You Look Pretty in a Headset, and of course I can’t wait to meet up with everybody again, old and new, and be the Official PinoyWriMo Distraction once more, haha! I’ve got an expanded arsenal of pictures of hot guys that I want to show you! Look, it’s Rodrigo Santoro…