I came, I saw, and I got conquered.
Before committing to National Novel Writing Month, I sat down with the calendar and a calculator. Given my oddball work schedule and various and sundry commitments, my daily word count would have to exceed the magic 1667 per diem. I was looking at 2631 words per available day. Some days I just made the count, some days I surpassed it, and other days I fell monstrously short. In all, I wound up with just over 27,000 words.
Am I upset that I didn’t hit the magic 50,000? A little bit, but not much. You see, I had a secondary goal. I wanted to see what I would learn about myself as a writer.
My preferred format is the short story, and I was nervous about attempting a novel. Could I organize that much material? Would my fingers seize up from the typing? Did I have any ideas worthy of a novel length story? The only way to find out was to do it, so I did. Here’s what I learned:
I have a very short long term attention span. After two weeks, I missed my other activities. I like to keep up with technology and gadgets, dabble in a little coding, and muck about with new software. When I got my Google Wave invite, I lost it. Total geek-o-rama for 48 hours, and I loved it. From there, it was back into the neglected feed reader to get lost in bits and bytes about neuro-plasticity, artificial intelligence, my beloved Android phone, and cartoons. I thrive on switching gears.
I missed my reading time. All output and no input makes Trev a dull boy. Ideas beget ideas, and stories beget stories. If you want to stand on the shoulders of giants, you need to make the acquaintance of those giants. Around week three, I threw in the metaphorical towel and picked up novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and TIm Dorsey. I’m back in my happy place, and I like it here. I already have two new short story ideas & revisions for another existing project.
There’s more than one type of writing. The physical act of writing, putting the words on the page, is one of them. The other is the creating and organizing part, the imagination game, as I like to call it. The act of figuring out the who, what, where, when, and how of your story. The latter is my favorite part. I simply like making stuff up. NaNoWriMo’s emphasis on the former was a challenge. I found I squeezed out some interesting ideas under the weight of deadlines and daily word count, but I had to leave them unshaped and uncared for while I chased the mighty 50k. This bugged me. I felt a real need to balance the typing and the creating.
Along the way, I discovered some tools, some tricks, met some new and interesting people, and had some fun.
Was National Novel Writing Month worth it? Yes. Would I do it again? Maybe. Will I continue to edit, revise, and build on the 27000 words committed to the hard drive? Yes. But first, I am finishing my book.
Good for you. I think anyone that learned something about their writing ‘won’. I finished, but I learned that I prefer my own way – editing each chapter before I write the next – which nano doesn’t give you the time for. It was fun, but I’m not sure that I’ll do it again.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by 3S_stories, Tony Noland. Tony Noland said: RT @3S_stories: New blog posting, A NaNoWriMo Debrief #nanowrimo – http://tinyurl.com/yajhoab [...]
Ooh. I so much agree with point #1 for me also. I have a very short attention span. I wonder how many people actually debrief like you have in a formal structured way. Very admirable and positive I think Good on you for both attempting it and gleaning the learnings.
..debrief like you have in a formal structured way
Yeah, bit of a geek that way. I figure life works like this: If you stop learning, you’re fucked.
Why take the chance?
Satisfaction & enjoyment are not necessarily correlated with hitting 50K. Sounds like NaNoWriMo was a win for you, then, irrespective of wordcount.
Trev, I too failed to meet the 50K challenge. The story I began is an excellent one and I intend to finish it, but hacking it out of my imagination in a mad rush for thirty days of literary abandon left me feeling a bit depressed. I am grateful for the challenge as it gave me Gaye Foster and her awesome journey. I don’t think I will be signing up again next year though.
Great post, Trev. I think it’s always good to stretch, and sometimes that means tackling different genres, different types of writing, different paces and places. What I get out of Nano is the 30 days of writing without an editor; it frees me for the next several months to just write. Which is difficult for me — I am an editor by nature.
I’m glad you nanoed with the rest of us, and found out more about yourself as a writer. I’m glad you stretched. Peace, Linda
It’s good that you’re analysing your working practices like this, and I hope you can find time to work novel writing into your schedule outside of the pressures of NaNo. Be careful not to impose limits on yourself though.