I am a goal-oriented person, but not in the way most people claim to be. I like to set dream goals, ones that I know are pretty near impossible to reach, and then fail at them spectacularly. It is my version of shooting for the moon and landing among the stars. My math will always be off, my expectations will always be too high -- which is why I love NaNoWriMo.Â
NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, a movement by authors to encourage each other to get words on the page, no matter how ugly or messy. 50,000 words, the minimum for a novel-length work, is always the goal. If you achieve that goal or surpass it, you win! And if not? Well, that's okay, too.
Have I won before? Yes!
Was it worth it? No!
I was left with an uneditable draft. I scrapped over 50% of that draft in editing and then decided the whole story would be better as a short story -- be sure to look for it next year in an anthology!
I was also left with a lot of burnout. I pushed through that and rolled into a year of MilWordY, which definitely left my creative well completely dry by 300,000 words. Everything I created that year is mostly garbage. One of those stories is being repurposed as a short story in Story Den's 2023 Spooky Season anthology. It only took me nearly 8 years to revise it into a workable draft. Once again, 50,000 words were stripped down to less than half.Â
In more recent years, NaNoWriMo has not been about winning. For me, it has been about starting a new year of writing projects. Instead of pouring my entirety into a one-month project I won't touch for ten years, I use November for whatever phase my next manuscript is in. Are we outlining? Drafting? Revising? Cleaning it up?Â
I've found this method to be more gentle on my creative process and more conducive to my capacity for long-term creativity. And, in the end, that is the intended purpose of this month-long event; to get us all more active in our writing lives.
It was never about winning. And to realize that has been a very freeing aspect of my writing journey. So I set the goal of writing 50,000 words each November, and I revel in my failure. Because when I go at my own pace, instead of the harried 1667-words-per-day, no-edits-allowed scramble, I wind up with a workable draft that I don't hate (usually).
We all wish we could have a workable draft in a month. In reality, self-pub books take about a year to two years to complete. You draft one, you take a break, you fix it, you take a break, you fix it again, you make your marketing material, you format, you fix it again, you publish, you fix those few typos you missed the first several passes.
Some people work faster than others, but I've learned to recognize the pace that works best for me. This year, I am working on rewriting Revolution Ascending, which I wrote over the course of 2020 and 2021. I'm expanding it into parts, fleshing out characters, and filling in plot holes. It will be ready to publish in 2023, and is actually already available for preorder on Amazon KDP.
To any writers reading this who are stressed about reaching that 50k in one month: I challenge you to look at the spirit and intention behind NaNoWriMo. Does your high stress level help you embody that spirit? Or is it holding you back?
That's all for now.
NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, a movement by authors to encourage each other to get words on the page, no matter how ugly or messy. 50,000 words, the minimum for a novel-length work, is always the goal. If you achieve that goal or surpass it, you win! And if not? Well, that's okay, too.
Have I won before? Yes!
Was it worth it? No!
I was left with an uneditable draft. I scrapped over 50% of that draft in editing and then decided the whole story would be better as a short story -- be sure to look for it next year in an anthology!
I was also left with a lot of burnout. I pushed through that and rolled into a year of MilWordY, which definitely left my creative well completely dry by 300,000 words. Everything I created that year is mostly garbage. One of those stories is being repurposed as a short story in Story Den's 2023 Spooky Season anthology. It only took me nearly 8 years to revise it into a workable draft. Once again, 50,000 words were stripped down to less than half.Â
In more recent years, NaNoWriMo has not been about winning. For me, it has been about starting a new year of writing projects. Instead of pouring my entirety into a one-month project I won't touch for ten years, I use November for whatever phase my next manuscript is in. Are we outlining? Drafting? Revising? Cleaning it up?Â
I've found this method to be more gentle on my creative process and more conducive to my capacity for long-term creativity. And, in the end, that is the intended purpose of this month-long event; to get us all more active in our writing lives.
It was never about winning. And to realize that has been a very freeing aspect of my writing journey. So I set the goal of writing 50,000 words each November, and I revel in my failure. Because when I go at my own pace, instead of the harried 1667-words-per-day, no-edits-allowed scramble, I wind up with a workable draft that I don't hate (usually).
We all wish we could have a workable draft in a month. In reality, self-pub books take about a year to two years to complete. You draft one, you take a break, you fix it, you take a break, you fix it again, you make your marketing material, you format, you fix it again, you publish, you fix those few typos you missed the first several passes.
Some people work faster than others, but I've learned to recognize the pace that works best for me. This year, I am working on rewriting Revolution Ascending, which I wrote over the course of 2020 and 2021. I'm expanding it into parts, fleshing out characters, and filling in plot holes. It will be ready to publish in 2023, and is actually already available for preorder on Amazon KDP.
To any writers reading this who are stressed about reaching that 50k in one month: I challenge you to look at the spirit and intention behind NaNoWriMo. Does your high stress level help you embody that spirit? Or is it holding you back?
That's all for now.
