Whew. How can it be December already?
This was the first year I made a serious effort to write an entire novel during the month of November. It’s an entertaining challenge, and I wanted to see what happened to the quality of my writing if I really pushed past my usual daily word count. I didn’t write every single day, so I didn’t reach the goal of 50,000 words, but my novel is about 2/3 complete, which is definitely a jump start.
I learned a few things over the course of the month:
If I really wanted to finish in 30 days, I probably spent too much time mapping out my novel and creating backstory for my characters. If I added the word count of all the background information I wrote, I probably would easily have 50K, but that’s not exactly the point. It’s National Novel Writing Month, not National Novel and Notes Writing Month.
Once the novel was mapped out, the writing went surprisingly smoothly. I was able to sit down each day, glance over my notes and the last bit from the previous day and start typing.
I discovered that I can write in less than ideal circumstances. I’ve always liked to wait until until everyone was out of the house before I started to focus, but with the pressure of 50K bearing down, I found that I could write even with people sitting in the same room chomping on crunchy stuff. It isn’t as smooth or flowing as writing I’ve done in better circumstances, but it’s good to know that I can do it, because in a household of six, it’s hard to find solitude.
I found that the quality of my rough draft was not significantly worse than those I have written more slowly. If anything, I probably managed to keep more of my facts straight between chapters, because I didn’t have time to forget things I’d already written.
Bottom line? NaNoWriMo was an interesting and useful experience. I now know that I can write a lot faster than I have been writing, and that a quick rough draft is about the same as a slow rough draft. I know that mapping out the storyline ahead of time is a good way for me to work. Even when I deviated from the outline by adding or cutting a scene, I still had the basic structure to rely on. It enabled me to work out problems before I began to write, which made daily writing flow much more smoothly.
For the coming year, I plan to maintain a brisker writing pace, and to finish this draft so that I can begin the revision process. I’m happy to be as far along as I am, and I’m glad I participated in NaNoWriMo. How about you? Did you try it, and did you find it worthwhile?
I did not “win” this year either. I did manage to write more days than last year. I did manage to write for a whole day this year which was not the case in my first go around. I didn’t get 2/3 of a novel done but got 21000 plus words out. I know where it is going and will finish this one, even though last year’s is still waiting to be finished.