FILL: reflecting on Nanowrimo

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 6 Dec 2012

As has been mentioned, I "won" Nanowrimo. What that means is that I wrote over 50,000 words during the month of November. In fact, I wrote over 50,000 words by November 21, but only ended up with about 66,000 words by November 30, not the 75,000 that you might expect.

Personally, the word count isn't what I find useful about Nanowrimo, although it does provoke me to see just how many words I can produce. What I find most useful about Nanowrimo is that while I'm grinding out those words, I also get some glimmers and reflections about my own habits. For example, weekends just are not good times for me to produce words. I'm doing other things. At the same time, they are actually useful times for me to make lists, do outlines, think about what it is that I'm working on. Then during the week, I can really hit that word count.

In fact, that's why I don't think the word count is that good a measure for Nanowrimo. If you start, and you grind out some words, and you stop without achieving 50,000 words, you may still have gotten some real good out of Nanowrimo. Did you learn something about your own writing? Did you find out more about that story that you were working on? Do you know what you want to tackle next? Do you know why you stopped? Do you know what to do the next time so that you can keep going?

One of the funny things I noticed was that when I hit 50,000 words, even though I had set a personal goal of 60,000 for the month, after 50 K I just slowed right down. I know when I hit a goal, I tend to slack off a little bit. So I need to keep setting my goals just a little bit beyond, to keep stretching myself.

The other thing that I really came away with from this Nanowrimo was that I didn't prepare enough. My ending wasn't really well thought out, and I got bored with the main character. Oh, I kept going, but it's trash. Now I want to go back and really do the preparation, and try again.

I also noticed that I have way too many outlines, frameworks, planning questions, and so forth. Sure, I enjoy collecting these things, but I really need to figure out a good way to focus down when I'm doing something like Nanowrimo. It's way too easy for me to decide to try out seven different plot outlines or something like that, and end up flailing around in a pile of possibilities.

So. It's not just all about the wordcount. Make sure you prepare before you start! And beware of getting lost in the trappings.

More or less.