National Novel Writing Month is over and I am a Winner!
First thing: Starting a project is the best feeling. Words on the screen.
First week of writing created the biggest high I’ve ever had. The buzz from finally writing the words of Monica’s story that had been swimming in my head for over a year. I can honestly say, I had forgotten how much I love writing stories. I kept repeating myself, “need to do NaNo every November no matter what.”
Second thing: The crash tries to drain all juices from you, buffer so you can take breaks.
First day of November is a public holiday in France, an excellent start to the month and there’s a second public holiday on the 11th which really helped get the words down. About half way through week 2, the slump hit me hard. The hardest parts were from 28K to 35k. The halfway mark never encourages me, it’s the bit after the halfway that motivates me. At 35k, I’m like, “it’d be stupid to stop now.”
Third thing: talk to himself, he is the best at sorting out your messy ideas.
Especially this time for me because my story and plotting dribbled to zero. Around 25-30k, I realised the trajectory of my story didn’t work. Which meant the main parts of the previous words were useless. I verbal vomited all the pieces of my story and explained how they didn’t fit, he asked a few questions and provided me with the perfect solution. I could still use the start but will have to be edited in the future. I was ready to write again!
Fourth thing: writing sprints are key.
20 minutes of writing: stretch: water: 20 minutes again. The last 15k was doable because I changed my idea and kept splatting words onto the screen. I know there are writers out there who need coffee/treats/music/etc to write. I used the nano timer feature put my headphones on, turned down the volume because the end beep is terrifyingly loud, and put up the distract free writing feature on Scrivener. That’s all I need. I wrote roughly 600 words per 20 mins Sprints and the last day 1000 words per 30 mins Sprints.
Fifth thing: I can write without any idea of where the story is going!
I would not have thought that before this month, I always needed something to keep me going. After the hiccough of number 3, I had two solid scenes to write and I was able to pants the remaining words (except for the last 8K) on those two scenes by building up to those two.
Sixth thing: I don’t need to write in chronological order.
I’m able to hop around and change things up without getting confused. The last 8k, I rewrote the start of the story. My Scrivener project looks like: start: middle: new middle: end: new start. Even within that, I’ve written scenes which don’t fit in the place I wrote them but that’s next year’s headache.
Seventh thing: I need buddies.
In the Scrib group dedicated to NaNo, there were two individuals that wrote at my speed. Keeping an eye on them and staying pace with them kept me going through the slump.
Eighth thing: 3K words is my maximum per day.
I got 4k on the last day (Sunday) because I wanted to pass the line. That’s not 7 days per week, I wrote Sat, Sun, Mon, Wed, and two Friday’s. Wednesdays were my lowest wordcount days.
Ninth thing: accountability works.
Publishing my attempt and accomplishments on LinkedIn worked in my favour. The few likes and nice comments from my working world gave me the clap on the back I needed.
Tenth thing: prepare blog posts in advance or pause the blog for the month of November.
Incapable of posting! I had to drop out of my writing groups and now must play catch up. I had an urge a few times to write some poems but ended up just squiggling on the page.
There you go, the ten things I learnt from this hectic crazy month. If you participated in NaNo and did your own recap post, link it below in the comments!
Elegances Icy™ 