What Have You Learned from NaNo 2012?

I learned that I spend a good chunk of time fiddling with sentences and trying to make everything "perfect" in the first draft. Having to meet such a word count in a month is helping me kick that habit.

Having failed Nano twice before, this is the first year that I've actually made it. This year, I learnt that...

1. I love sharing my misery. I wouldn't have made it if not for my writing partner. Knowing that she's also suffering brings me great and wonderful joy.

2. Playing word wars really, really helps. Knowing that I need to beat that annoying writing partner of mine made the words flow like nobody's biznez.

3. If you're like me and have no school, no kids, and effectively no job (I'm a wedding photographer and November is pretty much a dead month. I literally just sit at home and design albums for clients who had their weddings in the fall.), you CAN write 3K words everyday. You'll end up hating yourself and everyone around you and becoming somewhat feral, but it is possible!

4. Reading good books voraciously --> writing somewhat okay shit voraciously. Then I came to a book which I found meh, and my writing became meh. So I threw that book at the wall (metaphorically speaking, I would never do that to you, my sweet Kindle) and moved on to another book, and I was back to writing voraciously.

5. Having an outline really helps. Knowing the direction my story is going, no matter how vague, gives me the confidence to keep going.

6. If you're stuck, throw in a new character. Actually, don't. This is how I ended up with 7 POVs...at least 2 of which will be cut during the editing stage.

7. Speaking of editing, if you edit while doing Nano (ahem, you know who you are...), I AM JUDGING YOU. *Narrows hippo eyes*

So far NaNo has taught me how to imitate Charlie Brown:



Seriously though... hmmm...

I've learned (or confirmed) that I will always, always outline. I would flounder otherwise.

I've learned that however detailed my outline is, I will still end up going in directions I hadn't thought of, or find my characters responding in different ways to those I had expected. I'm taking that as a good thing though.

I've learned (or finally recognised) that despite all my excuses, I can perfectly well write 500 words a day, every day, as a minimum, no matter how busy I am. All I have to do now is keep that up after November...

I learned:
1. That writing is like exercising - the more you push yourself, and the more regularly you do so, the easier things become. I've been pushing myself, writing 4-5k some days. Now on a 'bad' day, I will write 2k without even realising I've done that.

2. If I plan to write a epic fantasy novel that will come in over 150k, I should do an outline first, for the whole thing. The fun of discovering things about my characters can be overshadowed by the horror of discovering that they're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and talking about sheep.

3. Don't hunch over the laptop for 6 hours a day. It is bad for you.

1. My family is boring for 11 months of the year but choose November to be unpredictable and spring surprises.

2. I can write short stories.

3. Outlines are useless for me unless I'm working on a 60k+ story.

4. My wordcount won't improve until I get another personal computer. I miss privacy and being able to work through the night.

I learned that word wars are my salvation. And that writing a 50k book in a month isn't as hard as it once was...but making it any sort of good is still a big challenge. Maybe next year!

I've learned...

1. I get more done physically writing than typing
2. I get more done at silly times of the night
3. That I don't have as much spare time as I thought

I'm not done but will be just over halfway - hopefully- by the end of the month.

I had no idea I was able to fork out so many words every night - consistently! Suppressing my inner editor has been an eye-opener of sorts. And I still manage to actually like the story I'm writing.

I am amazed I have gotten to 40k already, with November being such a busy month at work.

Even with essentially no other obligations, it's really difficult for me to write over 2.5k every single day (some days I can write ~4k, but then writing the next day will be painful and I'll probably only manage ~1k). I don't know why. One day, I may want to figure that out and fix it. Luckily, though, there's no real rush for that, because I'm in no danger of becoming a full-time author any time soon (such things require actually submitting material for publication and having it get accepted).

Attempting an epic fantasy during NaNo is not smart. Not for me, anyway. Maybe others can do it better. But 1) the length means that writing at my speed, I'm not going to be close to finishing by the end of November and that's depressing and 2) the worldbuilding is ridiculously all over the place because I can't waste time looking things up. It's going to need so much editing.

Basically, I learned that I can't seem to do it. I logged in to the nano site at the beginning of the month and it said this was my 8th year participating. I have never managed to get more than 3000 words down before fizzling. This year not even that. Sniff.

I learned how I work as a writer:

1. that preparing an outline and jotting ideas, doing research, and putting together pictures helps me, but I need to set a deadline for myself otherwise I will never start writing. October was my prep, and then November was just writing.

2. that like other people before me said, writing is like exercise, I need to do it every day even if it's just 500 words.

3. that after writing every day for so long, I found my word count can be up to 3k a day, and my average is 1500-2000 words. Something I didn't think I could do.

4. that it's okay to skip ahead to scenes you know all the info for. when I started skipping to my fairy tale retellings, my word count jumped, and my writing started to flow again and the tangents stopped. I know I can reformat the scenes after the story is finished.

5. what I said in the last bullet point: to FINISH the story without editing too much. that inner editor is a killer, and must be destroyed until editing stage (or in this case after November). otherwise, I would never get any writing done at all.

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of right now

I learned some wonderful things this year from participating in nano.

1. I am an obsessive compulsive planner. Characters and plot need to be fleshed out down to the chapter and often deeper. Settings I can let slide.
2. Sometimes an unexpected twist come along and it is okay to go with it.

And most importantly.
3. I am capable of writing a book. Evidenced by my now completed first draft, clocking in at 92,759 words plus a 1300 word epilogue. Now nothing is going to stop me. On to the next one, before I go back to edit.
4. And 4k a day is a reasonable pace for myself.

That I really can't turn off my inner editor, but I'm still vaguely keeping up anyhow.

That I can totally do this without more than a rudimentary outline... and it's actually working better than usual.

Corussa said:

I've learned (or finally recognised) that despite all my excuses, I can perfectly well write 500 words a day, every day, as a minimum, no matter how busy I am. All I have to do now is keep that up after November...

Click to expand...

...and this. Definitely this. NaNo has definitely pushed my work ethic quite a bit upward.

That I can write 3k a day

That I can write 6k a day on my day's off

That I need to continue setting goals and meeting them.

1. I can do it if I treat it like a month-long free write. I do have a plot outline, but it's still very loose. This way, it's a great way of exploring voice and characters. Because in my 'free write' anything goes, it's more fun than usual, and I find myself taking more risks. I'll use quite a bit of it in the next draft. Some of it's terrible!

2. I've learned I'm a social writer. I LOVE all the pep talks both adult and junior Nano send out, and the forum discussions.

1. I should have at least an outline to know what I will write. This year is the second time I decided to try the 50 K without any idea what the novel should be about, and it looks like I will not have 50K on the 30th. The year before I knew what I wanted and succeeded.
2. Any serious writing is best done by me between breakfast - never without - and start of anything else. After housework, going out or whatever, hardly find back to a decent writing. Evening, night? Not for me.
3. I love NaNo - for the company.

I still can't just do one project for NaNo, but I can do mostly one project, if I'm inspired enough.

I've learned a few things this year, in my first time of seriously attempting NaNoWriMo:

1. Writing is a much more fun than I thought it was, and I already enjoyed writing.
2. The key thing to getting a novel/anything done is to shut up about it, sit down, and just write. "Writers block" isn't a thing, it's just an excuse for not doing something.
3. Outlines are awesome; seeing a story evolve on its' own is even more awesome.
4. I have the ability to write every single day; if by some chance I'm physically prevented from doing so, I have the ability to write the next day.
5. Whenever I set goals like this, life seems to happen a lot more often. I've never had more things "come up" in my schedule then when I have activities that require solitude.
6. With less than 10k left for the goal, NaNo has proven that I can finish a rough draft of a novel before the end of 2012, which is much cooler than my previous goal of finishing one by the time I'm 25 (year and a half).
7. A slight reiteration, but writing is neither a chore nor miserable. Sitting down and telling a story is some of the most fun I've ever had.

Best of luck to everyone else in finishing! Not that luck will have anything to do with it. See you all around the forums!

I learned that I must set aside one month of the year to write a first draft. Evey year. Doesn't have to be November but it does have to be a month of intensive words.

I failed this year but it was work, family and editing another book that took over. Still I have 25k words on the new book and can easily finish it before the end of the year.

IT ISN'T OVER YET!
(am in panic mode)

1. I learned that I am inexcusably lazy but I can write 2000 words a day easily enough.
2. That I don't enjoy the pep talks or social aspects but I do enjoy the competition element of Nano.
3. Those stats help. Knowing how how I have done, should have done and the rate I'm going at helped me to push myself.

Speaking of those stats and projected finish times... I wonder if there're any programs online that will do the same thing, only you can enter in your own aimed-for word count, start date and finish date?

It might help a lot of people stay on track in non-NaNo months.

Cliff Face said:

Speaking of those stats and projected finish times... I wonder if there're any programs online that will do the same thing, only you can enter in your own aimed-for word count, start date and finish date?

It might help a lot of people stay on track in non-NaNo months.

Click to expand...

How about Pacemaker? I'm not sure if it does all the same things, but it's a start.

Oh wow, that's brilliant! Exactly what I was hoping for!

*bookmarks page*

This was my first NanoWriMo, and I've failed horribly. I've learned a few things though.

I've learned that November is a horrible time to try and write 50k words, and who's bright idea was this? Thanksgiving weekend anyone? That, coupled with the fact that I just got a new job this month that I had to adjust to meant I never had a chance. I've written around 18k

I've learned that I'm probably never going to participate in NanoWriMo again, because of said horrible timing, and because I hate the pressure of having to write 1700 words every day. That's just not how I work. I like to write a couple hundred words on the days I work, and a few thousand on the days I don't, and that's just how I am.

I've learned that the idea of NanoWriMo doesn't motivate me, as it's supposed to. Writing a book while thousands of others also write their books at the same time? That just makes me feel discouraged because so many others are doing the same thing I am, and not all of us can become successful at it, which makes me think that I'll never be successful at it.

I'm sure I'll write 50k words in a month at some point in my life, but it probably won't be during NanoWriMo.