I learned a lot in the month of November, thanks to the NaNoWriMo challenge (National Novel Writing Month.)
For those who don’t know the NaNoWriMo is “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon” or as one of my fellow participants said, “Write until your eyes bleed.”
For me it ended at 10 pm on the 30th, that is when I saved the file, pulled the thumb drive and shut off the computer. I’d had enough and couldn’t wring another word out.
Oh don’t go congratulating me, I didn’t meet the goal of 50,000 words. I tapped out at 37,335 words.
November was a hectic month for me, I knew that going into the challenge, so I’m fairly pleased with the word count I achieved and I feel pretty good with about 75% of it.
I absolutely love the first four or five paragraphs.
I learned a lot too, both about writing and myself. I thought I’d share some of what I learned with you.
- A truly gifted and dedicated writer really CAN turn out 50,000 words in a month.
Turns out I’m neither.
Of course some showoffs perfectionists geniuses can actually scrap their original novel on day 17 and complete the 50,000 word challenge in the remaining 13 days (Donna Owczarek.) I’m so proud of you and honored to call you my friend.
- Even though I stopped reading blog posts, you all did not stop writing them.
When I signed into my googlereader on Monday, I had 518 posts to read. Please bear with me as I work my way through them.
- Facebook, e-mail and Twitter will not help you write a novel.
No matter how many times per day I checked them, no magic plot line appeared. I actually had to write.
- If you hit a wall with a character or scene, don’t worry about it. Go on to something else.
You can waste an awful lot of time trying to figure out if/when you want your heroine to become involved with someone.
- The highlighting feature in a word document is your friend.
You use it to change scenes or to remind yourself of something you need to correct or research. Or figure out your heroine’s romantic dilemma when you aren’t so crunched for time.
- You may want to research your topic a little bit before starting.
Having to pause, in order to google and read about a topic can really throw off your rhythm.
- It also probably doesn’t hurt to have an outline or character synopsis’ for any major characters you want to showcase.
I think I based the heroines characteristics after me, but I’m not really sure.
- Characters and storyline develop as you write.
Even though you want to write a mystery, it can turn into a love story. 🙁
- You can start your book heading in one direction and in the middle of the writing, find a better beginning.
When this happens cut and paste is your friend.
Any of my fellow NaNoWriMo participants have anything to add?
When I do this next year, I hope to not have all the additional activities that made this challenge difficult, but who knows, if I can write the same amount next year, I might actually have a novel. 🙂
And just because I can, here are some cute pictures of my dogs.
Did your mom abandon you for NaNoWriMo?
She’s boring anyway, always on that computer, I”m going to sleep.
I get the impression that you are relieved, relaxed and ready to enjoy December with the pup.
Still, what an accomplishment. 37,000 is a whole lot closer to 50,0000 than My Vickie would get to.
Love
Bert
I don’t have the first clue about how to write a novel – I’m impressed that you would even try to write 50,000 words and I agree with Pamela – it’s just an arbitrary number to give you something to shoot for! What’s really important is how dedicated you are to setting and completing goals, I think you should be amazingly proud of yourself!! Congrats!
Congratulations. Cannot believe you got that many words written. Do you feel it could become a novel? Wouldn’t that be fantastic!
Thanks for the pics – just because you could. We always enjoy them and the “bored” photo really is rather funny.
Congratulations anyway, I say! Even if you didn’t hit 50,000 words you still accomplished quite a bit and learned a lot along the way. Much braver than those of us who did not even attempt. Fiction isn’t my thing but maybe next year I’ll attempt some sort of non-fiction research project for the month of November.
And then again, maybe not. I hope you enjoy some time to relax!
Writing that many words is nothing to sneeze at – good job! At least you learned some things along the way and will know more of what to expect next year. 🙂
Love the pics!
I don’t do NaNoWritMo because I don’t want another in my graveyard of started but never completed novels. Occasionally I will go back to one I’ve saved on my hard drive and see if I am re-inspired, but it seems best to leave those characters alone. The last time I revisited one, I had a dream in which the character talked really mean to me.
Hey Sampson, Hey Delilah, Jetty here. Hi Miss Jodi.
OMD, the fact that you had the discipline to participate is amazing. Mom always says you learn so much during the journey that sometimes it’s more important than the outcome. Thank you for sharing your process, no doubt it will help so many of us who write for all different reasons and projects. Digging out is challenging, go easy on yourself!
You still did very well. IMO 50,000 words is just a number. The thing is you wrote. For a month. That is dedication in my book. 🙂
So long as you had fun and learnt something from the experience (it certainly sounds like you did!), who cares that you didn’t reach 50,000 words! Actually, your points reflect the way some of my posts are written LOL. I do wonder about the timing of this challenge. Wouldn’t a quiet month like February or August have been better than the mad month before Christmas?
BTW, I think love can be pretty mysterious 😉
Well, even though I’m not a writer it seems to me that you learned a lot, and did great!
Oh my goodness, I fall down that “research hole” sometimes. I start out writing a scene, then I Google something, and then twenty minutes later I’m like, watching self defense videos on YouTube or something.
37,335 is 37,335 more words than you started with! I’m proud of you for trying, and happy to be your blog friend!
I think I’ll have to participate next year! Sweet pictures of your pups 🙂
Will we get to read this book? And i think you did amazingly!!
Hi Jodi,
I was really looking forward to hearing how it went!! Don’t be hard on yourself, you did awesome, that’s a lot in one month, was it hard to be creative under pressure or do you work better under pressure?
And to echo Basil, will you be finishing the book soon? 🙂
I missed you,
Big wags to all,
Your pal Snoopy 🙂
Ha ha! I got a laugh from that one. You forgot to add “Crazy” to the descriptions of me. I love to hear how your novel is evolving, that you’ve found a new beginning, that your characters are having (or maybe not having) affairs that you haven’t planned for, and that your genre is morphing midstream. That means, your characters have minds of their own. How cool for you. That happened to me with my last novel, and I loved how it turned out. Thanks for participating in this challenge with me, and 37 K is nothing to sneeze at….especially with all you’ve had going on. Nice job my friend, nice job.
I think that you’ve made a wonderful accomplishment! Thanks for the tips.
It is still a great accomplishment, well done! I learn valuable time management lessons every day from blogging but don’t have the true dedication to write 50000 words in a month. I truly admire those who did it.