NaNoWriMo 2016, Lessons Learned

So I thought that now we’re almost a week into final month of 2016, I’d tell you how my NaNoWriMo went this year. It failed.

I did not write 50,000 words of novel. In fact, I bailed on day 4.

On day 1 I wrote 2212 words.

On day 2 I wrote 2288 words.

On day 3 I wrote 1730 words.

I called my failure on day 4 having written a total of 6230 words towards a new novel. So why was this?

I called the close of play for several reasons.

1) I knew I couldn’t sustain a narrative with only 1 character.

2) I hadn’t done any prep work.

3) The research was digging into my writing time.

4) I decided too late to actually take part.

5) I’d not long moved house.

So what did I do for the rest of NaNoWriMo?

I left it a few days before deciding I’d still like to write stuff, so I went the NaNoRebel route aiming for 50k of anything that’s not a novel.

How did I fare with that task? Again, I failed.

To be precise, I wrote 20 complete short stories totalling 28,887 words. While this may not be 50k, I counted it as a personal victory for me.

It’s 20 stories that I didn’t have before November.

20 stories I can potentially send out to submission.

I didn’t write every day. But I made a lot more words than I expected to.

I don’t see my not hitting 50k for either reason as an actual fail.

I’ve written stuff that didn’t exist before. I wrote anything at all!

That’s a big thing for me, considering how my brain gets on certain days.

What I’m saying is, take what you will from your NaNo experience.

You might not have written a novel, or reached 50k but what ever you DID accomplish was through your own hard work.