Reflections on this year’s novel writing challenge

For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s a international challenge held yearly in November to write an entire novel in one month.

Quick background

So the story goes that there was this dude who had been struggling to get his novel written for sometime. One day he finally got gatvol and decided he was going to give himself one month to get this done or move on to something else.

First, he defined his parameters by pulling the thinnest novel off his bookshelf and using some thumb-suck mathematics to estimate its length at about 50 000 words (This is, in fact, an industry standard and the equivalent of one of those pink cover romances). Therefore, in order to write a novel in 30 days he would only need to write 1667 words per day. Easy-peasy. Then he called up all his friends and asked who was in. From there it has grown like a mushroom.

Nanowrimo isn’t a competition. There is no grand prize or winners. It’s a personal challenge. There is an official organisation and even a website. But I’m going to gloss over them because the organisation has been struggling with what a friend called “chronic foot-in-mouth disease”. That is to say, they have been embroidered in numerous scandals in recent years, some minor and some serious. But for most participants the organisation is distant and unrelated to their goals.

Word Goal

I have been doing Nano for some years, with a few adjustments to make it more feasible. Because, the thing is, November is quite possibly the worst time imaginable to try and write a novel for a South African (and others, I’m sure). It’s the end of the academic year, and specifically exam time, and it’s the end of the business year with work often trying to cram all the last minute stuff in and people suffering substantial burnout. Also – this is based on observation of social Nano groups – it is nearly impossible to get that many words down everyday for a month, while working full time.

So what my writing group does is aim for a smaller target of 250 words a day – that’s an abstract, two paragraphs – and in most cases can be achieved in within 15-30 mins. It won’t net you a novel, but it adds up to over 7000 words. But for me, Nano is never about the word count, it’s about committing to finding the time to do your few words, to overcoming the voice that says not today.

My Project

This last year I have been on a story story kick. There is a major local short story competition that closes at the end of January and I have a story idea that I want to submit to it. So my plan was to use Nano to get that first draft hammered out quick, quick, which would then give me oodles of time for editing.

Achievements

So how did it go? Well, honestly, I struggled this year, and I ended the month feeling burnt-out and dissatisfied. I simply had too much on my plate and it was a month of overwhelm, and quite frankly November could not have buggered off fast enough in the end. I didn’t finish that first draft, sitting down to write positively hurt some nights and there were a few I never managed to do.

That was how I felt. What I achieved tells a different story:

I missed a total of 5 days out of 30 (17%). I think this bothered me so much because of the daily check-in with the other group members. In my head it became this source of pressure.

I did not finish that first draft (it only needed to be 5000 words).
The problem was a number of changes of direction, I scraped a lot of words, and rewrote the first scene, and a lot of the body, long before drafting an ending. I guess you could say I wrote three short stories trying to find one.

But in total in the month:
I wrote 19 405 words – that’s 30% over the goal. (Not all of this was for the short story, some was this blog).
Total writing time 34.8 hours – 30min over 30 days would only have been 15 hours

What I learned

The first time someone asked me this I totally blanked – it was at the height of burnout and if Nano was a physical thing I would have drop-kicked it. But, after a bit of time off and getting some of the other chaos in my life under control I do actually have some positive things to say.

Keep a cumulative tracker – Missing my goals and comparing my progress to others meant I lost sight of what I was achieving. And after taking the time to look back on it I have decided that from now on I am going to keep a logbook of my writing.
This is to help me plan writing time into my routine, by looking at when I write. Seeing how much I am writing and what is taking up most of that time. It is both an accountability checker and a score keeper.

Bounce story ideas off others first – I am still learning my own process and looking for ways that don’t require writing a lot of useless stuff in order to find my story direction. One way might be to consult with others before getting in too deep.

Outline to keep the discovery process more focused. A quick outline seems to help me maintain my direction, even as I let words and ideas flow freely (one day I will talk about this process in more detail). It seems to streamline my work. My problem is there is a point where I run out of outline and I need to make the effort to stop and compile a new outline, or create more detail in the old one, when I am inclined to just keep writing and rambling.

The fact is I know it is possible to write everyday if you set your mind to it, I have done it before. And that lots of tiny amounts can add up. What I want to take forward into the new year is that thirst for writing, that desire to look for opportunities for it. And to just keep making progress on my projects.

I think we can call that a resolution.