Monday, November 26, 2012

Home Stretch and Lessons Learned

I'd like to be able say I'm going to hit the magical 50K that is the ultimate goal of NaNoWriMo. I'd like to be able say that the novel I am writing makes sense.

Neither of them would be true.

However, that doesn't mean the month is a wash. I still have all the words I've written and the beginnings to a story. I started NaNo (my first I might add) with the attitude of "if I write 50K that will be awesome, but I don't expect to". This freed me up to not stress about the whole thing and just enjoy the moment.

NaNoWriMo is 30 days and nights of literary abandon. 50K is the goal, but that doesn't mean you have to stress about it.

While most people were:
OMG! WHAT AM I GOING TO WRITE! I'LL NEVER FINISH IN TIME! THE WORLD WILL END AND THEY WILL ALL LAUGH AT ME!




I was:
Relax...it's all good.
Currently, I am at 25K. That means I would have to write 5K a day to hit 50K by Friday. Yeah. I could theoretically still make it. However, I'm not going to push myself. For one, I didn't do enough pre-planning. I don't even have a skeleton of an outline done and I barely know how a scene is going to end. I'm just writing.

So, lessons learned:
  1. I need to pre-plan some for next year. This year, it snuck up on me and I was completely unprepared. I need to choose one of my existing ideas and start some basic outlining/character design. That way, I'm not spending half the month trying to figure out what my characters look like much less how they would act. I figure I have a year. I'm not going to stress.
  2. Time manage better. This is a result of not being prepared for NaNo. Instead of writing, I goofed off too much. Breaks are important, but not to the extent that I did them.
  3. I could, with the right preparation, write 50K in a month. If you look at my stats, I wasn't too far off there for a while, then I got bogged down and stumbled.
  4. I might have to choose something goofy to do next year. I generally write very serious things, so it might be fun to try something different. After all, that is what NaNo is about. Stretching your imagination beyond where you thought it would be.
So, as we say about my local football team, there is always next year. :D

#writemotivation got overshadowed by NaNo this month. I'm guessing that happens. NaNo has a tendency to overshadow everything. However, I do believe I made my goals (despite being very amorphous).

  1. Survive NaNo. Yup.
  2. Work on HJ. No, but I wasn't expecting to be able to. I just had it here in case I was up to it. I wasn't.
  3. Blog once a week. Technically "yes". However, last weeks blog was VERY late and was part of a Blog Tour. I did not do my weekly #writemotivation post. I was too tired.
  4. Cheer on my #writemotivation tweeps. YUP! I didn't get as much in as I usually do, but there was some dino zombie cheeleader cookie slinging going on.
So, there you have it. Once November is done, I'm setting aside Troubleshooter so I can finish Hate Jacket.

'Till next time.

14 comments:

  1. You did great. I managed a whopping 10k. And I love that you went at it with an entirely relaxed attitude. I, on the other hand, stressed daily!!

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    1. LOL. I had enough to stress about with out adding writing to the mix. Also, 10K is 10K more than you had at the beginning of the month! :D

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  2. we fully sympathise with the complete lack of planning. We had NO plans, no defined characters - four of the five characters didn't even have names and we weren't in the frame of mind to start. 75K in and we still have absolutely no idea what we're doing :D
    But you've gone into it with the right attitude and you're more likely to finish the book than someone who is stressing out over reaching the 50k so much that they quit.
    And quit goofing around! :D

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    1. LOL. :D Well, my characters have names, but it seems my plot is very "and then and then and then". I did shoot a grenade down the gullet of a 16 foot tall monster. :D

      But...it's Star Wars The Old Republic! I can be a Jedi!

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  3. Hey, 25K is a huge accomplishment and better than I did. I gave up two weeks in. I'm still working on the same piece, but so much happened last month that I didn't have space for writing. And I'm okay with that. This month, it'll be better, and I'll finish what I started. :) And if not, I can always make "don't procrastinate" my New Year's Resolution. :)

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    1. LOL. Yeah, life has a way of getting in the way sometimes. Sorry you had a rough month. And yes, you'll finish. :D

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  4. I had everything planned out... and just couldn't write as fast as I wanted to. Eh. I could still make it, if I REALLY wanted to. But I'm rather apathetic this year.

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    1. *hugs* I know how that is. I'm feeling that about my story now, but it's almost over. :D I've had fun and now have a start on a story. :D Progress is progress. :D

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  5. It's hard to plan everything out, and when I read that you "hadn't planned on how scenes would end" I thought, "I NEVER know how they're going to end!" I do have a synopsis I laboured over to get my WIP into some cohesive shape, but I'm pretty much winging the details, just trying to get the characters to hit all the spots along the way that I *have* figured out. It sounds like you've accomplished a lot this month, and that's really the key goal. For any month! So ROCK the HECK ON!!

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    1. Oh I'm the same way, but I usually have an idea of where I want to go with it. This one, not a clue. I'm just typing. Usually something pops up as I'm writing, but I think since I wasn't mentally prepared for NaNo, it's been harder.

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  6. I wrote . . . a ridiculously low amount of words for my first NaNo back in 2003. So you did just fine :).

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    1. Yup. I'm also playing around with the idea of leaving it as a Novella. One of the ideas I tossed around for this world was a series of Novella's/Short stories to show different aspects of the world.

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  7. half a nano is better than none, especially your first time out. that's about all i wrote this month, too. i think you did very well. huzzah!

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    1. Thanks Val! I'm pretty happy with it and you should be happy with yours as well! :D

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