I think the main reason I've never completed one of my NaNo novels is because I keep thinking "Oh, I'll continue writing in December until I'm done!" And then on December 1st I wanna do absolutely anything but write! So I'm glad I finally finished it in November! Forcing myself to write this morning though. Trying to establish a habit of writing every morning before work. But just working on something without an outline and something really silly so I'm just having fun with it. Need that after the very outlined and serious NaNo..
Just wondered how the folks who were participating in the 2019 adventure got on. Did you stick with it to the end? Did you reach your 50,000 words? What are your thoughts about the experience?
I did not get on with it. Gave up at the beginning, then ended up getting slammed with nearly 50000 words of college essays, tests, and online discussion. Only found enough time to get two poems and a flash done this month. Good on anybody who could do it.
I wrote about 61,000 words (on one story and over 15,000 words in key scene events for a potential sequel to it). i didnt think I would stick with it, but once I got going, I carried the momentum on through the month.
What a fantastic result. Congratulations! Do you think you'll be able carry on writing at that sort of pace (or near enough?) If so, you'll be 'done' in no time at all. It's writers who are prolific like that who can really build a career. I realise there will probably be lots of editing to do, but you'll have a solid framework in place.
Yeah, the timing of the event just doesn't work for everybody. November (and December) are always the kinds of months where I have lots else going on. Even back when I was furiously writing every day, I had to slack off at that time. Pre-Christmas, and all that. Plus if something is going to go 'wrong' during a year, that's when it will happen. Jinxed.
There in lies the challenge.... Day 6 of December and I've only written 2,000 words I thought it was because i was focused on my finals. But I turned in my finals on Tuesday and I havent been as productive as I'd like in my writing and it bugs me....
I cheated... I started in October because it was my first time and I didn't believe in myself. Turns out I was wrong! By the end of November, I wrote nearly 90k words and had started a second draft. The new layout of the site definitely helped. I know the badges and total word count bar filling up were psychological tricks, but I'm a sucker for them. I swear I wrote faster and more every time I got close to getting another badge.
I'm delighted to hear it was such a huge success for you. Okay, you started in October, but nearly 90k words is a fantastic result. The whole point of the exercise, I suspect, is simply to get people writing. Obviously it did that for you. Once you get a first draft done, you have something to work with, and editing isn't all that awful an experience as some seem to think it will be. It's the time when you work on perfecting what you wrote. And who doesn't want to see their own writing get better? Anyway, congratulations. I hope you keep it up.
Terribly during the actual time limit set by NaNo. I finished the month with just shy of 30k. But, the adventure made me eschew my analytical mind for that period of time. I just wrote and wrote and wrote and did not look back. I'm now 90k-ish into the piece, having cannibalized portions of another story that I had not thought of as a prototype when I wrote it, but which clearly was exactly that when I started with the NaNo project.
Spank me, for the farthest I got was to droll at their cups this year... And to invest my time in everything but writing. Finished a couple of Nanos long ago. On both years I had no plot, no characters, a lot of distractions around, and I made up the story as I went along. For sure psychiatry's researches would pay for that sort of thing. Both experiences felt quite enjoyable. Exhausting but enjoyable. Made me feel more of a storyteller than a writer. Maybe the next year.
Does the word count have to be exact? If not, you could estimate. Count all the words on five lines - some lines will have 50 words, others will have 7, etc. Add them up. Go over your written pages and count "one" for every 5 lines written. Multiply the two numbers. You'll get a rough average. * the reason why I suggested 5 lines is to give you a better sense. Some lines will have a lot of words, others will have a few. If you only count one line's words you may not have a good estimate. The other option is to get someone to volunteer to count them - got a younger sister or nephew or a child of your own? Get them to count for/with you, make a game of it. It probably won't be exact but it should give you a ballpark number. All I could think of......let me know if either works - or what you did end up doing.
I used to do camp Nano by setting a time goal for the month. The last few times they allowed either a word count, hourly, or page count goal which was much more flexible. It seems like now they've redone the website, they've forgotten to add (or done away with) that feature. If calculating an average word count per page is too annoying, just count one page, keep that number and apply it to every page you finish. The spirit of Nanowrimo is beyond an exact word count. Keep up the hard work in your folder/notebook and enjoy your writing! Don't worry too much about the exact numbers!
I did some writing, but boy do I prefer a threaded forum such as this one for discussions. Their site is too social-media-like for me.
One of my friends who I met in a writers class at a college years ago was becoming a good writer. She'd grown a lot in her skills. Then she participated in National Writers Month, and just knew that all that she wrote was gold...actually was convinced God had given her the words. It was her worst writing I'd seen. She published it through Create Space and sold 14 copies to her friends who told her it was wonderful. She wanted to hear the accolades from me. I told her the good things I spotted in the work. She kept pushing me for more, so I gently gave her a critique. At that point she pulled away from me. I have not been a fan of the contest since she allowed it to destroy her ability to write.
Yes, the contest was to blame. She did it too fast. Her other works I had read were radically better. And yes, her ego was also to blame. She also wrote about things she knew nothing about. This was her first novel. After she finished it, she needed to have rewritten it for another year or so. Then it might have been up to the quality of her other works.
^ Isn't that the way NaNo works though? The point is to spur people to just write as fast as possible, and end up with a very rough draft or at least a big chunk of one. Nobody comes out with a fully polished manuscript.
So the point is, after one writes the novel, first draft they need to polish it ad infinitum until the writing is good. She didn't because "God gave it to her that way."