Kara Dennison
November 3, 2021 
It’s November again — and for many of us, that means NaNoWriMo is underway. National Novel Writing Month encourages people to write a little bit every day, eventually leading to that all-important first draft. Many participants have smashed their 50,000-word goal, and even gone on to publication. (After a bit of editing, of course.)
But even with a word tracker and a support system, writing every day is hard. Even if you’re a professional author. Even if your life depends on it. Fortunately, these anime stars know exactly how you feel. They’ve got familiar problems; and if they can push through, so can we!
Rohan Kishibe Is Always Busy
NaNoWriMo teaches us that a little work every day will stack up. But sometimes it feels like life just doesn’t let up. Rohan Kishibe of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure knows that feeling all too well. He can’t even do research or blow off steam at the gym without ending up in some sort of life-or-death situation. Etiquette or die? Deadly treadmill race? And let’s not even go into the corpse that won’t stop bleeding. All bigger distractions than social media.
The good news is, all those distractions can be a good source of inspiration. Sure, you’ll never get back all that time you spent figuring out how to eat corn on the cob without angering the gods. But you’ve finally got some material for your next story.
Shigure Sohma Can’t Leave Home
You’d think never going out would cancel out that whole “distraction” thing, right?… Well, hopefully we know better after the last couple years. While you can theoretically stay on your NaNoWriMo game if you’re stuck at home, you’re going to stagnate a lot more, too. We imagine Shigure Sohma has some dry creative periods, seeing as his whole zodiac curse deal means he needs a work-from-home setup. You’ve got all the time in the world, but no material.
So we’re not surprise Shigure hustled Tohru into the Sohma home. Now, we’re not suggesting you take on a boarder. (Unless you really want to.) But if you’re still stuck in one place, maintaining some communication with others will get that inspiration rolling again.
Drosselmeyer Can’t Control His Characters
This isn’t even a NaNoWriMo issue… this is all writing, all the time. Sometimes it feels like your characters aren’t behaving the way you’d like them to. You want one thing, they want another. That’s big-time the case in Princess Tutu, where godlike writer Drosselmeyer finds his fairy tale stars rebelling against his pen. Rebelling so much, in fact, that someone else picks up a pen in retaliation.
Since you’re probably just writing a story and not trying to control an entire city, we’ve got good news. Not only is this normal, it’s good. It’s not so much that you can’t control your characters as it is that they’re very clear in your mind. And when they’re that clear in your mind, writing them becomes second nature. So what feels like lack of control is actually anything but. Cool, huh?
(If you are trying to control an entire city with your eldritch writing skills, you have to tell us.)
Best of luck on your NaNoWriMo projects!
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