Sometimes the words get stuck. And sometimes it's so unbelievably easy to make them flow.

I write for a living. Not as an author, mind you, although maybe someday. As a journalist, sometimes (sadly) you don't have time for creativity. Creativity gets shoved under the bus, because deadlines need to happen.

There have been some positives and negatives about this for me. Some positives: I've learned how to write in every mood. Bored, sick, tired, sad, angry, happy, excited, you name it. Because writing is my job, and such a deadline-oriented one at that, I had to learn how to write through any possible mood.

Some negatives: this wears me out. I love writing. I wouldn't have chosen it as my career if I didn't. But sometimes, at the end of a week writing articles, or researching articles, there's just no room left in my brain for creative writing.



Sometimes I have ideas hit me, and I scramble for my laptop, my phone or a piece of paper. This happened to me, for the first time, in a while I had a story idea. I was so excited about this, I started writing notes on my phone, even though I was in the middle of a work event. (Oops!)

I wanted to talk about this process, because I know that so many people struggle with not feeling creative enough. In our millennial generation, creativity is key. What can you create? What can you write, draw, sing, paint, fill in the medium of your choice here... It's not a bad thing, but it does put pressure on all of us, but we feel the need to be creative all the time, and that's just not possible.

Now, all of this ties into NaNoWriMo. Don't worry, I didn't forget the title of the post.

NaNoWriMo, for those who don't know, stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it takes place next month in November. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in one month. A novel. In one month.

The reason this all ties together for me is because NaNoWriMo forces you to shove creativity aside, in a way. The goal, as I understand it, is just to write. There is no editing or rewriting that takes place during this month, that can come later. All this month is about is getting those words down on the paper.

Now I've done NaNoWriMo once before (and wrote a novel that will never, ever see the light of day) and it was good for me. Not easy, but good. It forced me to get out of my own head space, it forced me to stop feeling like I had to write the perfect creatively creative thing. It forced me to just write.

That's why, I'm going to do it again this year. I need to get out of my own way, and just write. We don't have to strive for perfection in our creativity, we just have to create. :)