Your Average Per Day
5,021
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Target Word Count
50,000
Total Words Written
150,645
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Current Day
30
Local Writer Breaks Personal Record with Aplomb
A local writer, entering her eighth consecutive National
Novel Writing Month challenge with an entry into this month’s Camp NaNoWriMo (www.campnanowrimo.org), shattered her
personal writing record by a wide margin.
The local woman, who recently found herself unemployed, spent
the month of April writing over one hundred fifty thousand words.
No, that was not a typo; over 150,000 words, all written in the span of thirty
days. Just as a reference, one hundred fifty thousand words in a Microsoft Word
document with standard spacing is the equivalent of approximately three hundred
thirty (330) pages. That is quite a bit of writing for a single month!
When asked what the topic of all this frenetic writing was, she
replied that it had started out as a life experiment in language learning and
writing.
She explained, “After several unfruitful months of looking
for work, Camp NaNoWriMo, which I would have normally entered anyway, provided
me with a creative outlet for my frustration and a worthwhile goal at the same
time. I entered the writing event with the standard goal of completing a fifty
thousand word document within the thirty days of April. But based upon my personal
interests and in the spirit of increasing my attractiveness to potential
employers, I added a twist. This month my challenge was to write those fifty
thousand words in a blog and teach myself Spanish at the same time.”
“If this all seems like too much, it was. But not for the
reasons that you might think. First off, I was starting a brand new blog on
WordPress and I had never used this writing platform before. I simply started
too late to understand how to use it fully enough for my purposes. That was my
first mistake,” she continued.
“My next mistake was that of one big technical problem; my
language learning materials, all previously ripped to my computer, were simply
gone. My desktop computer had refused to unlock sometime late last year after a
power outage had shut it down (it was protected by a surge protector though) and
I didn’t have the money to get it fixed. I thought I was still alright anyway
because I had all of my iTunes saved to an external hard drive. Wrong again.”
“When I hooked up the external hard drive to my netbook,
nothing happened. Nothing at all. I opened up “My Computer” but it didn’t even
register that the hard drive was there. I turned the computer off and restarted
it again but there was nothing. All of my previously ripped material—some of
which I can no longer find after my most recent move—was gone, completely
vanished. My Spanish project was not exactly doomed, but it was off to a rocky
start.”
The author then goes on to explain that she found some older
cassette programs and started working with those but not at the pace she had
intended.
“Between the starting difficulties I was having with
learning how to use WordPress effectively and my missing language materials, I
just threw myself into my writing even more. My continuing job search was
stalled and while I was initially still studying a little Spanish, as the month
progressed I eventually stopped that too. By the time mid-month rolled around I
was determined to complete my first ever one hundred thousand word month in a National
Novel Writing Month event,” she explained.
“I can go back to the Spanish next month; this month I
reduced my goals from finding decent work and writing fifty thousand words about
my Spanish studies to simply finding a decent job and writing one hundred
thousand words period,” she continued.
So how is that job search going for you?
“It’s not. I’m sad to say that it seems as if most of
corporate America, or at least many of its’ representatives here in what I
believe is being called the “rust belt” now, have bought into the Wal-Mart
plan. By that I mean that if you are willing to work part-time for minimum
wage, jobs are easy to get; you can sign up for welfare to get your groceries paid
for and your medical coverage too. But if you want full-time employment
with benefits and you want to—even expect to—do rewarding work
that is also challenging and earn a decent wage at the same time, you are out
of luck.”
“Don’t get me wrong; I know that there are still really good—even
excellent—companies and jobs in America. Not all companies operate in this
manner,” the author continued. “The internet is a double-edged sword. Now I can
and do receive e-mail notifications from multiple sources every single day with
supposed job opportunities for me. Many of these jobs are so out in left field
that it is ridiculous and many are not even real job opportunities at all.
Still more are offers for things that I either cannot do or I am not interested
in doing. I constantly receive “job
opportunities” for the military, truck driving and even advanced medical
careers—as in, I need to already be a registered nurse or a medical
doctor to get them. It’s crazy. And while it’s nice to have e-mail assisting me
with my job search, the internet is also forcing potential employees to all
look exceptional on paper. What if you don’t look exceptional on paper
but you really are exceptional? I’ve always gotten jobs when the
employer had the opportunity to meet with me one-on-one; the internet simply
screens out applicants who do not meet a certain criteria. I don’t even get
calls.”
Why do you suppose that is?
“One of the biggest reasons that employers aren’t calling is
that they never see my application. If they aren’t hiring full-time I’m not
interested to start with. If they are paying minimum wage I’m also not
interested. I have expensive student loans to pay; how is that supposed to
happen when I can barely afford my utility bills as it is? I would not have
taken out those loans if I had known that I wasn’t going to be able to repay
them.”
“The second reason that employers don’t see my application
is that when they insist that you put a ‘real’ number in the amount you expect
to earn for the job, I do. I put a number in that will allow me to survive, if
not necessarily thrive, as an employee. I know I will be worth it. The
truth is that by simply comparing that portion alone, employers will never call
excellent job candidates because they are not willing to invest in good people.
And that right there is a symptom of a much larger problem in America today.”
What is that?
“Many companies, despite what they say, seem to have
forgotten what it really important. People are important; if you have the right
people, you can go to the moon, just as we proved back in the sixties. With the
wrong people, well, pick your catastrophe and that’s what happens. The real
trouble is that while we all have tremendous potential to achieve excellence
within our lives, many people don’t care about actually doing the work it takes
to be excellent. Many people only want to appear as if they are
excellent and plenty of those same people do look great on paper; they just
don’t have what it really takes to do more than strike the proper pose.”
“One final problem with this whole “internet as pre-screener”
process is this; I have been forced—and by that I mean you cannot leave it
blank or they won’t accept your application—repeatedly to complete questions that involve my age and
as many of my colleagues are finding out, ageism is on the rise in America. It
is and has been for a very long time illegal to ask any questions that can tell
an employer your age. This includes actual date of birth and date of graduation
from high school. I have found some form of these questions on almost every
application that I’ve either filled out or looked at online now. This is a
problem for many of the chronically unemployed in America today,” the author
concluded.
What has happened to your Spanish studies?
“My Spanish studies are temporarily on hiatus; I will
probably start them up again either later this coming month or in June, albeit
it at a much slower pace than I had originally anticipated for this month’s
project. I do know that I want to be
more careful when I structure it this time and I want to be sure that all of
the pieces are in place first when I do continue. As I free up time from other
responsibilities I will ramp up my study time again; I have a raft of other
self-improvement projects on the back burner too and that is just one item on a
very long list.”
What’s next on that long list of things you plan to do?
“Despite my many successes at completing a National Novel
Writing Month event by writing at least fifty thousand words in thirty days, I
have only written one complete novel so far. Everything else has fallen apart
during the course of the writing. I still write enough, it just hasn’t been
enough of what I planned to write; there have been many false starts during the
process.”
“As for my first novel, unfortunately I have never gotten
around to editing it yet and it is a really rough draft. I want to
finally edit that novel and then I am going to teach myself how to self-publish
via Amazon’s KDP—that stands for Kindle Direct Publishing—and initially publish
it in e-book format. I would also like to publish it in paperback after I finish
publishing the e-book version.”
So what will happen to your blog after this month? Are you
going to continue writing?
“Absolutely; I love to write. If nothing else this
month—especially the end-of-the-month push that I just completed—has shown me
without question that I love writing above almost anything else. My blog is
designed around the entire concept of self-directed learning. Spanish—and
language learning in general—are but one facet of the many interests that I
have. I have every intention of continuing my blog and, as I have done my whole
life, continuing my journey of self-improvement via self-directed learning.
Please feel free to follow my blog if you’re interested in watching my
progress.”
It seems like you have plans that will keep you busy for a
very long time—good luck!
