50,000 words. That’s how much I’ve written this month. Okay,
actually it’s a little over 50,000, but still. As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve
been participating in NanoWriMo and it’s been an enjoyable ride. It’s also been
a headache, frustrating, and a tad bit stressful trying to keep up with the
word count goal. But hey, that’s writing for you. Actually, NanoWriMo has been
pretty enlightening for me. I’ve realized some things about myself as a writer
and about writing in general, and I thought I’d share it with all of you. So
here are five things that I’ve learned from NanoWriMo:
1.) I Can Write More Than
I Think I Can
This was probably my biggest takeaway from this month. In order
to get 50,000 words written in a month, you have to strive to get at least
2,000 words a day. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, but some days 2,000 words can
feel like 20,000. When it comes to writing, there are days when it feels like
there are no limits, while others feel like you’re walking through quicksand.
Writing 50,00 words in one month seemed like a reach to me, because it’s taken
me longer to write that before. But this month I got in a rhythm that helped me
keep up with the goal, and I could reach the point where I could write 10,000
words in a week. There were still days where I wasn’t very productive, but I
used my writing pattern to force myself to catch back up. I’ve realized from
this if I can keep up with this schedule I’ve created, I’ll be able to finish
my first drafts a whole lot faster than I would if I was writing at my previous
pace.
2.) I Am Terrible at Following an Outline
I’m honestly not much of a planner, even though I try to be.
For my Nano novel, I Choose You, I
wrote out a general outline of what I wanted to happen in each part of the
book. I figured that it would help me keep on track with everything and help me
know what I should do in the story. And it worked. For the first little bit. As
soon as I hit what I wanted to be Act 2 of my story, the outline pretty much
disappeared. New events popped up, events that originally were going to be
there never showed up. Oh and a character that was supposed to be a bad guy,
pretty much just turned into a jerk who really isn’t so bad. Yeah, me and
outlines aren’t the best of friends. That being said…
3.) Having a General Idea of Where a Story is Going is Extremely Helpful
This might seem like a bit of a contradiction from my last
point, but it’s actually not. Part of the problem I had with I Choose You was that I really didn’t
have a good vision of where I wanted the story to go. I knew how I wanted it to
start, and I somewhat had an idea of how I wanted it to end. The middle was
pretty vague. I had an idea or two of things that could happen in it, but
nothing that really connected point A to point B. This kind of made it hard to
write. Without having a general idea of how I wanted to connect my beginning
and ending, this story was more difficult to tell than it needed to be.
4.) Taking a Step Back from a Story Can Be Good
While I was writing I
Choose You, I took a break from writing Iridescent.
Which was honestly a really good thing, because while I was working on
something else, I got new ideas for it and realized some of my current ideas
just weren’t going to work. I was getting into a little bit of a rut with Iridescent and now I can see what the
problem was and how I can fix it going forward. And hopefully these new ideas
will help me make it an even better story than it would have been before.
5.) It’s Not About the Results, It’s About the Journey
Okay, I’m going to be honest and admit that this sounds like
a cliché, but honestly it’s the truth. For a first draft at least. This month,
I didn’t focus on what the end result for I
Choose You would be. I knew that the story probably wasn’t the best and
that a lot of it would need to be changed if I ever wanted to do something with
it. But I didn’t go back and try to tweak stuff – something I’ve been known to
do in the past. Instead I just wrote whatever came to mind. I played around
with my characters and wrote a story. When I go back and reread it, I’ll
probably cringe at parts and wonder what I was thinking when I was writing that.
But it doesn’t matter. I can spend time editing and rewriting it later on.
Right now, the important part is that I finished it. That’s what counts.
So how about all of you? Did you participate in NanoWriMo?
If you did, did you learn anything new while you were writing your story?
