My Nano History To Date

2006 – The Summoning Fire – Planned and plotted the story in August, long before I needed it, then went over it time and time again before the first of November. I wrote 61500 words in 23 chapters. Each chapter was written in a single day (though some of them took more than 4 hours to finish). While writing such a dark book took a psychological toll, especially towards the middle of the month, I rocked this project. Of course, I had been writing nearly every day since February and The Summoning Fire's 61.5K words were less than 1/3 of my total word count for the year. So I was "in shape", writing-wise. As if I had been prepping for a marathon all year.
 
2007 – Running Waters (now renamed) – Planned and plotted the story in the last weeks of October. I wrote 51000 words across 8 chapters (out of 25 chapters planned). I had written probably 50K words in 2007 before 1 November, most of it the Horse Girl project. I won Nano. But I didn't finish the book (I'm working on it again now, with an updated outline and a new working title).
 
2009 – Finished the Horse Girl Project – I had been not writing the last 2 chapters of the Horse Girl since the middle of 2007. Self doubt can really slow you down. I finished Horse Girl in the first couple days of November. Which was less time than I expected it to take. So then I decided to finish out the month of November writing stories. Trying to duplicate what I done in 2006 by writing one story every day. That didn't last. Just because I could do it in 2006 didn't mean I could do it again, without any practice. I wrote 9 stories. Before November 2009, I don't think I had written more than 10K words that year. Still, since I had (finally) finished the first draft of Horse Girl, I counted it a Good Month, even if not a Nano "win".
 
2010 – The Closing Crew (shelved) – Barely plotted and loosely planned in the last week of October–and put on the shelf after 26000 words. Another not-win.
 
I would say my Nanowrimo Performance has been largely downhill since doing so well in 2006, my first time ever. Maybe I should just let Nano go. Support it, sure, but don't try to fit it into my schedule any more.
 
I would also say that "loosely prepared" and "winging it" are not how I should approach writing novels. Short stories, sure. I can wing short stories and write lengths from 5K-20K words with only a character, a situation, and a vague idea of how I want to structure it. Novels? Not so much. Novels need planning. And I should know the story enough to have an outline of it before I start writing.
 
Will I do Nano again? I have no idea. Ask me next October.
 
-David