NaNoWriMo is Over!

December’s here (boy did it arrive fast) and thus November has ended and so has National Novel Writing Month. Here’s how it went for me:

MY STATS
Average writing speed: 600 words per hour
Average hours spent each day: 1 hour
Goal: 50,000 words written
Actual Words Written: 39,700 words and ~14,000 words edited
Result: 1 Novella rough draft completed and editing begun

** Some challenges I faced in NaNoWriMo **

• Not revising what I write. I can see that resisting the urge to self-edit will be like kicking a nail-biting habit.
• Writing the same amount of words everyday. My time spent writing was very inconsistent. There were days that went by where I wrote 0 words towards the target story, and days where I wrote 6,000 words. I noticed though that I was a lot more productive on weekdays that I took off work and weekends where I didn’t work before than I was trying to write in the evenings after work. I already suspected it, but my job is taking a lot of my juice it seems.
• Getting in the mood. Trying to write romance while in a bad mood is like trying to paint a wall while blindfolded. You can slap something down to cover the blank slate but don’t expect it to be anywhere near your best work in creating romantic contract. In fact it may actually suck.

** Some benefits I obtained through NaNoWriMo **

• Faster Drafts. Mastered the art of drafting out a full page in 30 minutes or less! By the second half of the month, I was sometimes able to spit out a full page in 15 minutes, which had before now been non-fiction speed only for me – never for fiction writing. I feel like I’ve grown some wings!
• Finding my voice. Turning down my logic and allowing my muse to freely speak, my writing turned out more raw and natural on the first try than usual. This was a great exercise on finding and developing my writing voice.
• I Got a Prize! I now have a new manuscript ready to be edited, polished and submitted, and a head-start on another one! Okay, so that’s not really a prize but just the product of my efforts, but it feels like one.

So although I didn’t actually reach my target number of words written, I still feel like I’ve won. I also feel that I would have achieved my goal and then some had this not been SUCH a super-busy. I’m proud of what I managed to accomplish with the time and energy I had. And just because National Novel Writing Month is over doesn’t mean that I have to stop setting my writing goals high. Who knows – just maybe I’ll reach 50k words this month.

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Tagged as: NaNoWriMo, writing life