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.