Normally, I eschew the monthly challenges that get scattered throughout the year. I find things such as “No Shave November,” “Dry January,” and the like somewhat problematic. I don’t really need to follow the crowd when it comes to what I want to do with my life. For example, this year, I decided to go dry for 28 days starting on a random day in mid-November. I did not because someone else decided that I should. I did it for myself. And as we know, there are other challenges throughout the year that range from the aspirational to the truly idiotic. That said, over the years, I have participated in two of these…sort of.
The first time I participated was about ten years ago. I decided to try NaNoWriMo. However, I didn’t really participate. I just wrote a novel in the month of November. I never went to the website or anything of that nature. I did it on my own, and again, I did it for myself. Since I enjoy the act of writing, I found it to be a nice way to spend a little time in November. In the end, I wrote a novel that had some merit for its genre. I’ll say that I’m pretty proud of it, though it’s not something I would ever publish under my real name.
I will say that I did like the structure of trying to get to 50,000 words in a month, and I planned my day around it. The first thing I would do every morning when I got to the coffee shop was to sit and write. I aimed for about 2000 words per day. That part was a little artificial, but it gave me a goal. I didn’t always adhere to the numbers, and never once did I get down on myself when I didn’t hit the 2000-word mark. The art of building words into beautiful sentences that told a story was the most important part for me.
Part of the problem with these sorts of challenges is they encourage less than mediocre effort. The whole thing becomes a numbers game. I understand the idea, which is just to get the ideas on paper and fix them later. The problem is that most people cannot fix the issues. It can leave one wholly unsatisfied. Since I avoided most of the rules of the challenge, I was very satisfied with my efforts.
This year, I am trying FAWM (February Album Writing Month). The idea is that you write 14 songs in the course of the month. This time, I actually went to the website and signed up. I am putting my songs on the website. I am recording the ones I can and uploading them to SoundCloud, and the ones I can’t record, I am putting the lyrics on the FAWM site. (Some of the recordings are a little on the rough side.) As of February 7th, I have posted six songs. Of course, just a few older songs can be found on my Instagram or on YouTube.
The upside of actually participating in the FAWM is that I am getting lovely positive feedback. The other positive is that although I’m trying to write new songs, I am also trying to use up the skeletons or fragments of older ideas floating around in my head. And honestly, if I don’t come up with 14 songs for the month, I don’t really care. I am, as always, more interested in quality over quantity and in enjoying myself.
The downside of the challenge is the problem I always come across. The participants are spread out all over the world, and I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, so the chance of collaboration is pretty much non-existent. This is a problem for my main goal in 2024, which is to play complete sets of original music with others. Ideally, I would need percussion, bass, and an additional guitar player. At my age, that is a bit of an ask, but we shall see.
Wish me luck.
Henry James Morello 