NaNoWriMo Musings

April, Not November!

It’s a bit early to be deciding/not deciding on whether or not to do a NaNoWriMo novel this year … but it’s a GREAT time to look back on previous NaNos, particularly if you participated last year, and evaluate.

What Worked?

I can write 50,000 words of the same characters/story.
I can write almost every day and find time for it.
It’s easier for me to focus if I change my environment, move somewhere with fewer personal distractions.
I like wordcount goals, because they give me a baseline to aim for.
I will hate every project I work on, at least once. If I push through that feeling, I always love it again on the other side.
I need to plan ahead. Without a plan, my stories veer off into strange and mostly useless territory as I try and figure out what my story wants to do. This is a great way to beef up my wordcount, but leaves me a right mess when it comes to fixing problems later.
Never, ever, under any circumstances, go backwards and edit. Ever. Always forward. Most valuable lesson ever, because without this, I would never reach the end of a story.
Finishing a story, even one I am not proud of, is its own strange and bizarre sort of beastie. If I’d kept abandoning drafts without finishing them, I might never have realized just how important the feeling of wrapping up a story IS.
Writing WITH another person, at the same time, made the entire experience more fun.

What Didn’t?

I learned :

I can write over 1k words in a fifteen minute writing sprint without too much strain … but the words I write rarely make me happy when I go back to them.
I hate time deadlines, they make me feel stressed and actually destroy my productivity as they approach.
I like the environment of a coffee shop … usually. I don’t like buying drinks every day (I am too frugal for this) and sometimes it’s so noisy and crowded that I write WORSE than I would have at home. Libraries are almost always too noisy. (When did THAT happen?). I need to learn how to get that focus at home, because there is no good, quiet, study place nearby that I can visit for free. (My current solution is to write in a closet, with a puffy headset that blocks out most outside noise. Not recommended for people suffering from claustrophobia.)
The pace of NaNo drains my energy and produces writing I am not proud of. It forces me to zoom past elements that I know I can solve if I stop and think about them, and praises wasted wordcount over elegant simplicity. I CAN write 50k words in one month, but I cannot write a novel that I am proud of in that same time frame. (However, NaNo taught me that I am CAPABLE of this thing, and that sure and certain knowledge gives me the confidence to write at the pace I am more comfortable with.

Your Turn!

What worked for you? What lessons did you learn that made you a better writer?

What didn’t work? What lessons did you learn that taught you unexpected things about yourself?

Related posts:

NaNoWriMo Fever
NaNoWriMo is Upon us!
NaNoWriMo is Uponxt Us