My NaNoWriMo Journey

I realize my blogging has sort of become obsolete...sorry about that.

At any rate, I have decided to blog today...whatever that's worth.

I just recently completed my NaNoWriMo journey! For any who might not be aware, National Novel Writing Month is when a bunch of people attempt to write a novel during the month of November.

The whole experience was a lot of fun for me. I loved the community; it was very welcoming and supportive throughout the long month of writing a story. I also just love spending time with like-minded people. Writers are a different breed, and it's so much fun to be around them.

I expected, going into NaNoWriMo, that I would write the novel way faster than the allotted month. The last book I wrote was Queen of Caradale and I wrote that book in all of 9 days. I thought I'd be done in the first couple weeks and spend the rest of the month editing and such-like. I could not have been more mistaken. I did start out the month 5,000 words ahead of the goal...but by week 3 I had fallen behind and on the very last day, November 30, I was 7,000 words behind.

I spent all evening writing on Thursday, desperately trying to write those 7,000 words.

I am an under-writer, so I encountered a problem around 40K which was simply that I had already finished the novel, the story had gone through its full arc and come to a close and I still needed another ten thousand words. Because I'd already finished the story, writing those last 7,000 words on the last day of NaNoWriMo was initially a very big struggle.

I eventually resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to get 50K words, I wasn't going to win NaNoWriMo. And I was okay with that. The point of NaNoWriMo isn't to get that 50K words, it's to write a novel. And I had written a novel. I was content with my progress and okay with not winning.

And then suddenly I found something to work with: I discovered a had a subplot that I had touched on but never fleshed out, so I spent time fleshing out that story arc and then looked up to realized I'd surpassed 50K and had won NaNoWriMo...with about 20 minutes to spare!

And I was so excited! I realized that even though I would have been okay with not winning, because I had actually written a novel, I was more eager to win than I had let myself believe.

I am very excited that I did, in fact, win. I'm even more excited that I got my next novel written! I love this story and I'm excited to eventually be able to share it with the world (I still have two other novels in the editing process right now, so this one will have to wait).

So that was my first ever NaNoWriMo experience. I loved it! I am definitely going to do it again next year!