Thoughts on National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month ends tomorrow, November 30. So if you’re still pushing toward 50,000 words, you still have time! Go go go~!

Like I said a month ago, this was my first serious attempt at NaNoWriMo. It’s been a wild month, full of write-ins, friend-making, and writing-encouragement cake. I had a lot of fun, but it was also really different. Here’s how it went.

I went to a different write-in every week and I met a ton of interesting people.

During NaNo, people hold “write-ins,” where you meet up with other people at a coffee shop or library and write for a couple of hours. There was only one write-in anywhere near me (and it was held at a time when I couldn’t regularly attend), so I ended up driving to a lot of random events.

And I’m glad I did, because each write-in was a totally different experience. My first write-in was super awkward. There were seven people there. Great turnout, right? But when one suggested we write, almost everyone left. Only three of us stayed to write anything. That wasn’t a great start.

But I kept at it, and every other meetup was awesome. I got to meet the author of Big Top Burning, a MG non-fiction about the 1944 Hartford, Connecticut circus fire. I attended an awesome, big-scale event with catered food, cake, and people who were as into fantasy as I was. I made friends! It was fun.

I wish I was in a more active area.

I live near a really large city. Not in, but near. And yet my entire NaNo region was dead.

There was no municipal liaison. The forums were empty. There were one or two write-ins, all thinly attended, and the most successful ones were ones cross-posted from another region. I ended up having to mine events from a different region, which meant that everything I went to was 40-60 minutes away.

This made socializing an absolute pain in the butt. I met awesome people, and they were far. I saw several cool libraries, and they are far. I learned about writing groups that are far away.

I am seriously tempted to apply for the liaison position next year, because there are  millions of people where I live and why are they all driving downtown to write?! This must be fixed.

I wrote a lot, and in a totally different way than I usually do.

I normally write like this:

• I outline for 1-3 months.
• I write approximately 2 chapters a week.
• I usually write an entire chapter (~3,000-4,000 words) in a day or two.
• Once I write a chapter, I edit it the next day. I usually change large details, restructure it, or reframe it. I move to the next chapter when it’s good enough.

I don’t do a lot of work on each chapter. But I do want each chapter to accomplish something specific, clearly show what mindset the characters are in, and set up a launching point for the next chapter.

This means I usually end up with 8,000 words a week, all lightly edited. I could not do this for NaNo. There simply wasn’t enough time for me to write 50,000 words and edit them.

The end result is weird. It’s much, much rougher than my usual first drafts. It’s more like a long-form outline than a novel. I want to rewrite… pretty much all of it. The beginning should not have happened the way it did, I needed to introduce a bunch of characters earlier, I need to change the motivation/conflict that drives the first half of the novel… Yeah. Big stuff.

But you know what? I’ve written first drafts–slowly written, lovingly edited–that I did that to, too. I recently finished draft #2 of a 90,000-word YA fantasy that I lovingly, slowly wrote. I still threw out the first 14 chapters and rewrote them from scratch.

This draft is uglier. But I’m throwing most of it away, so who cares?

I’m not sure that I’d write everything like this–it’s nice to have more time to be thoughtful about the content–but it was an interesting exercise. I’ll probably post more about that in the future.

And I’m not done.

I’m done with NaNo. I have my shirt, I’ve got my WINNER tag, and I’m officially at ~51,000 words. But this novel isn’t done.

This novel is probably going to be 80,000 words long, which means I have several chapters left to go. So I’m going to keep writing this through December. When I’m done, I’ll have a first draft that requires… really, really considerable rewriting, and probably a complete re-outlining.

But it’s still been an awesome experience. I met some awesome people, did some fun things, and saw some wonderful libraries. It’s definitely a fun experience–but the best part about it is the people.