SeleniumThoughts on my first writing November.
November 30th is finally here! Also, November 30th got here faster than it ever has before. I’m really not sure which. For almost every single day in November, I dedicated time to strictly creative writing. To be honest, I took two Sundays off, and Thanksgiving was a giant mess (not the holiday, or the food, both of which were excellent, but they conspired to be a mess on my word count). Full disclosure right at the start, I didn’t hit 50,000, I officially didn’t “win” NaNoWriMo this year. Full disclosure again, I’m ok with it,
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the idea that “someday I’ll write,” in the back of my mind. Kind of like the way that other people decide that they’ll retire and teach when they’re done with their first career. Except, I never wanted to wait till retirement age, I didn’t have a solid picture in my mind other than “not right now, but soon…ish.” That all changed with this November, starting on the first of this month, I became a person who writes regularly, adding words to the same story, trying to build it up into something bigger. Even though I only have about 43,000 words down at this point, I have an outline and a pretty good idea of most of the scenes that still need to come. I am a person who writes. I am a writer? Ok, we’ll work up to that second one.
This was my first time trying anything like this. What did I learn from NaNoWriMo?
I can aim bigger.
I started out shooting for the minimum word goal every day. I was afraid of burning out, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose momentum. But by the time I was in the second week, it was clear that I could hit 2,500 words a day without much trouble at all.
I need to plan ahead for holidays.
The Thanksgiving holiday was great, awesome food was followed by a weekend full of gatherings with brand new friends. It was awesome. But by then, I was only slightly ahead on my word count, which meant that taking those days off put me far enough behind that 50,000 remained out of reach. I also realized before that point that I was very driven to take Sunday’s off. But the daily word count meant I was left starting each week with a deficit. The week before Thanksgiving should have been my biggest push, I just need to be more aware of those things.
I actually do have ideas.
This is crazy to admit, but it’s totally true. I honestly wasn’t sure that I had any ideas big enough to fill out that many words. Now, I know I do. I spent about two weeks in October, a couple of hours each weekday, working on an outline, doing research into basic things like picking character names, but nothing even crazy in depth at that point. I just got a vague path down and dove in. I’m not saying that what I have so far is going to become the next Great American Novel, in fact, I’m sure it won’t. Not without a lot of editing anyway. But what I am saying, is that I can fill up between 75 and 80 thousand words with one idea, and there is more where that came from.
I will definitely keep going.
There is no reason not to. It’s part of a regular morning routine now. Creative, novel, writing won’t be the sole focus of every day, like it was for this entire month, but I know that I can devote 2-3 hours to it, 3-4 days each week and still make really good progress.
Tomorrow is December 1st, which means Chrismas decorations are coming out and I have to start planning for the next huge holiday. I also have a writing to do away from this novel, this blog for instance (because anything worth doing is worth doing well, right?), and looking for other freelance gigs. Now things are going to move to a more structured calendar, with blocks set aside for fiction, and various types of non-fiction, but from here on out, this will definitely have a regular spot with all the rest of it. I know I can do it now, and that is the biggest thing I learned here, as cheesy as it sounds.
