To any NaNo enthusiast, October is the month when you get to plan out your plot, do your research, and rub your hands together in front of your keyboard, counting the days until the first second of November 1st strikes. It’s a full 31-day preparation period, where you get to break your ties with the rest of humanity so that you can lock yourself up in your room and get your novel written. To me, October 2008 was anything but.

I had the flu in the first two weeks of October. As I emerged from bed rest and got ready to write out a plot, I accidentally scratched my cornea with my fingernail and ended up with a temporarily blinded right eye. And just as my eye was healing, just as I was ready to scramble for a last minute outline – as well as a real plot, because I had no story to show for all my weeks of forced confinement – I received word that my grandmother back home in the Philippines was dying.

Now here’s the thing: I’m working on my PhD at Purdue University. I live in West Lafayette, Indiana, which is twelve/thirteen time zones away from the Philippines. I am far away from everything that I love. I have papers to finish, statistics homework to do, and a dissertation to prepare for.

The grandmother who had always been my biggest fan was slipping away fast. When November 1 came, I was with my friends, escaping from the world in a Firefly-themed party. My grandmother died on November 5. My cornea is still healing. My flu is coming back from time to time. I finally started writing my NaNo novel on November 6.

This year, my novel is called “Weird and Lovely,” and it’s about a girl who loses her grandmother to cancer – but who regains her strength and finds herself after spending time with the ghosts of her dead grandparents. One week after I had first started writing “Weird and Lovely,” on November 13th, I passed the 50,000-word mark.

A lot of people ask me how I can type out a lot of words, and how I can come up with a story. I usually joke that I don’t stop drinking coffee. But the truth is: it has nothing to do with caffeine. It has nothing to do with anything that I eat or drink. It doesn’t even have anything to do with advanced planning or outlining the plot ahead of time. It’s just that, for the longest time, I’ve never really had a hard time coming up with words. I’m just naturally talkative. The trick is to get me to shut up, or worse, be concise.

The words, however, come pouring out when a story means something to me. This year, my novel is my way of healing my own wounds, of looking at my own past and seeing how it made me what I am today. I also got a few pointers from my professors this semester, who were privy to my affairs. One professor told me to celebrate my grandmother’s life by writing, because I truly was bent on giving NaNo up this year. Another professor told me to tell the story of my family before no one would be alive and around to tell it.

So, really, this novel is my therapy and my contribution to my history. It has stories from my childhood, tales that I heard from my aunts and uncles about my grandparents, and my own wish to see my grandmother once again.

I may have taken the roundabout way to tell you how to survive NaNo mid-month, but I needed my own story to tell you this: no one can tell your story but you. This means that no one is there to correct you, no one is there to tell you that you’re wrong, and no one is going to jump on you and tear your hair out if you make mistakes. You need only to set that story free, that story locked behind the bars of that prison in your head. Only you hold the key.

If you love your story, and if you have a story to tell, the words will flow easily. But some days, you may find yourself lagging behind, lacking inspiration, and thinking, “Why did I even attempt this?”

For you, I offer this advice: take a break.

It might sound counterintuitive, but really, if you want to get the words out, you can’t squeeze them out of your brain. You need to let the words flow naturally, by their own force. Do something else, something brainless: play the piano idly, take a walk and look at the world around you, go to the mall and watch people, hang out with your friends, mend the hems of your torn jeans, draw, design ballroom dancing shoes for Yao Ming, watch TV, watch a movie, and, if all else fails, sleep!

It’s not you that’s getting burned out: It’s your head. Recharge, get yourself some energy, and then return to the fray. You’ll find ideas pouring out of you; in fact, the most menial tasks are great ways for your brain to suddenly wake up. You may get that eureka moment as you’re sipping your coffee, listening to a sad song on the radio, or looking at yourself in the mirror and asking what the heck you’re doing on this planet.

Here’s another piece of advice: learn to read the language of your own body. When you feel that the words are coming out quickly, that your fingers are starting to take on a life of their own, and that your story is moving as though it had its own breath and soul, then you know that you’re on the right track. But when you feel that you are forced to write the novel, when you feel that you are being pushed to do something that you aren’t in the mood to do, and when this feels like an obligation, then stop. Rest. Do something else. Don’t turn NaNoWriMo into torture. Remember, the best writing should set you free, not imprison you.

You’ve reached the halfway mark – and you still have fifteen days to go before November 2008 closes. You will be tired out, thinking that you can go no further, and finding ways to push yourself so that you can at least get another thousand words to meet your quota, or another hundred, or even just one word. Rest when you can. Read your body language. Now is not the time to quit.

This is your moment to shine: this is your moment to tell your story. Whether you started on November 1st or November 6th; whether you had nothing at all happening to you in October, or cried yourself dry; whether you planned your novel or not, you have a story. You alone are the storyteller. Weave your tale. Write it down. You have that power.

Inez is a writer, editor, journalist, designer, scientist, educator, and dreamer. She was the ML for the region in 2005, and this is her fifth NaNo win (sixth, if you count her two novels last year). Her first two NaNoWriMo novels, THE SANCTUARY and THE ROMANTIC, are available via Lulu.com. You can visit her website at http://illustria.thefreebizhost.com/ .