NaNoWriMo Wrapup

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The first part of this post was written when I was in the middle of November and needed something to write, so I thought I’d record my thoughts on how my month was going as of Tuesday, November 20, 2018.

This year, I tried something a little different with NaNoWriMo. First I should probably mention that I started a new temp job on October 22nd and that didn’t give me a lot of time to do last minute story planning and such.

I had a general idea for a story that sounded pretty cool and was working on planning it on October 25th at the Thursday night writing group, but I just never quite got the whole plotting and planning thing figured out. At some point, before that, I had seen a contest where they were giving away “Novel Kits” and all you had to do was choose which of the three they were offering you wanted to win and leave a comment with that and a couple of sentences about why you wanted to write the story in the novel kit. So, knowing that there was little to no chance of my entry being one of the two winners, I figured I had nothing to lose by throwing my hat into the ring. I kind of forgot all about it until I was cleaning out my email and fond the notice in there with the novel kit I had requested attached.

Now I am not one to question when Providence moves on my behalf, so I figured if the novel kit fell in my lap practically on the eve of NaNoWriMo then I should take that as a sign that it was meant for me to use that as my NaNo novel this year. I read through it and printed it out. I wasn’t really even sure what a novel kit consisted of when I entered to win one but figured I’d never win, so it didn’t matter. I sure didn’t have the funds to buy one so I would just keep trying to muddle through planning my story idea.

Basically, the novel kit I chose came with 26 chapters planned out. Each chapter was made up of between one and five scenes also planned. Each scene had a sentence or two telling what was supposed to happen in that scene and whose point of view it should be told from. It seemed very doable so I was willing to give it a go. I figured no matter what I wrote it wouldn’t be great, so I should give writing to a completely planned out story a chance and consider it an experiment and see if by using an outlined story kit I could figure out how to create my own workable outlines in the process.

I have to say it is a learning process for me. I learned I don’t know nearly as much about how to write from one specific person’s point of view as I thought I did. I discovered I write mostly as an omniscient narrator.

So as of when I am writing this, on the twentieth day of NaNo, I have yet to fall behind the suggested word counts for the month. Now I certainly didn’t write 1,667 words every day. At first, I wrote more than that and actually had a couple of days padding in my word count early on. Then, tired from work and staring at a computer all day, I just couldn’t make myself write the almost two thousand words I had been writing but still forced myself to write at least enough to stay above par for the day. I also chose to write blog posts a few times instead of my novel. Why not? I was already a rebel since I was writing to an outline that wasn’t my own.

I also on a whim started posting on my Facebook feed every day or two to the “tune” of the twelve days of Christmas and reporting in on what and how I was doing. These posts were very well received so I had to make sure I didn’t fall behind or have a no words day as I wouldn’t want to post if that were the case.

Given the two new things I tried this time around, it has been my least stressful NaNo so far and the only thing stressing me out at this point is that I have written all but about three of the 107 scenes the novel kit had planned. I will just have to go back to the first few scenes and reread them and add words as needed since I know my writing in the first couple of chapters was awkward at best.

Checking back in today to finish this post. It is the Thursday after NaNo and I am still exhausted. I haven’t really been writing, I have really been struggling to do anything on a computer after work during the week and even on weekends since I have been working from home for several hours each weekend.

I did indeed finish NaNo, on the 30th, no less. It was a very different experience this time around. I did more writing on my own without the groups because I just wanted to be home or was too tired to drive somewhere else to write. I didn’t really have trouble finding things to write until I ran out of novel kit scenes. Then I found myself writing all sorts of things just to get my word counts in. Eventually, I did end up going back and rewriting the first few chapters of the novel kit book.

I did write several blog posts this month and the last couple of days of the month I went back and wrote completely new versions of the first few chapters of the book. I felt much better prepared to do so after spending the rest of the month getting to know the characters better. This actually worked very well.

I didn’t keep up with the days of NaNo posts either, but I will include all the ones I did get done because they kind of journal what was going on with my writing each day.

It’s the 1st day of NaNo and I’m NOT behind on my word count!

On the 2nd day of NaNoWriMo, I am still ahead of pace…

The 3rd day of NaNo was hard, I won’t lie, but I kept writing and writing and finally got the highest daily word count yet, still have a bit of a buffer. I would like to write 5k on Sunday to increase that buffer and get a couple of days ahead.

On the 4th day of NaNo, I got together with friends and wrote over 2,000 words. Not as many as I’d hoped but I am still ahead of the 6.668 I should have written with my total so far at 8,035 in four days. If I can just keep it up during the work week with all the evening meetings and such… Torn about whether to count the extra non-novel writing toward my word count or not. I have a FiveMinuteFriday I still haven’t written yet. Hoping to get that and the day’s 2k written between 6-8pm Monday. I am making tomorrow’s dinner right now so hubby can take some with him to eat before his meeting, so at least that is done.

On the 5th day on NaNo, I struggled to find time but managed to keep up and stay a little bit ahead. Wrote 1882 words for NaNo and 530 for a blog post about NaNo.

On the 6th day of NaNo, I wrote over 900 words during lunch, then joined a write-in for a final count of 2,518 for the day. That puts ahead of par again. I also found time before work to vote. It’s all about deciding what’s important to you. There is still loads of time to join in the fun. NaNoWriMo The world NEEDS YOUR novel!

On the 7th day of NaNo I wrote 682 words at lunch and then right after work, I fought traffic to get to the College Avenue Library for the Cutthroat Composition event where I wrote another 2,297 words so my total for day 7 was 2,979 words. That brings my total for NaNo to 15,414!

On the 8th day of NaNo, I wrote at lunch again and then met up with some of the usual troublemakers for Thursday Night Writing Group and managed to get 2,412 words in for the good of the cause. Anybody want to jump in and join the fun? We missed you, Cameron Steiman, but ASB kept us on track.

On the 9th day of NaNo, I decided to write the FiveMinuteFriday.com post for today so I added 399 words to my count for that and grabbed the 530 I wrote for last week’s FMF post too, because, yep, I’m going there. Yep, I’m a rebel.

On the 10th day of NaNo, I went to 2 meetings 2+ hours each that were very enjoyable. Then I went to the grocery before realizing that Hubby had a hockey game. Then I went to a little of the write-in at Platform 24, so many things to do, so little time. But I still found time to write!

On the 11th day of NaNo, I wrote a blog post. I also got way too little sleep.

On the 12th day of NaNo, I edited the blog post and created the graphic to go with it, and added 52 words. Still just the teensiest bit above par on the word count. So I need to quit resting on my laurels and get serious again starting tomorrow. Hey, what can I say? It was a very hectic Monday. Stay tuned to read the blog post on Thursday where it will be posted at 5pm.https://lighthouselifelessons.com

On the 13th day of NaNo, I went to a write-in and wrote 1 scene and finishing 2 blog posts. (970 words total)

On the 14th day of NaNo, I wrote from home but put it off until later and wrote 1 blog post and 1 scene to get just enough not to be behind the goal, but the extra padding I had is all used up now. (1,420 words)
NaNoWriMo Goal for day 14 = 23,338
My total word count so far this month = 23,496
In case you were wondering, I have not counted any FB posts or emails, just novel and blog stuff.
On the 15th day of nano, I wrote during lunch to add just over 750 words to my novel. Then I went to Thursday night writing group and did writing sprints. Daily word count total is 2,182 and total word count so far is 25,678. So, still ahead of par!

On the 16th day of NaNo, I struggled to add 1,207 words to my novel and stay barely above where I needed to be for the day.

On the 17th day of NaNo, I worked off and on most of the day writing from home with a few of my favorite AuthorTubers who had previously recorded virtual write-ins. Doing this I was able to add 3,674 words to my novel and put myself a day ahead again.
Total so far for the month = 30,587 words
I’m starting to run out of novel to write and am not sure writing it alone would get me to the 50,000 words I need for the month. Be on the lookout for my FiveMinuteFriday blog post in the next day or so, still thinking on the prompt word and letting it marinate a bit.

On the 18th day of NaNo, I wrote 1,243 words which was enough to keep the one day ahead of par I had built up again.

Then on the 19th day of NaNo, I wrote a FiveMinuteFriday.com post and a sentence in the novel and called it good enough. (329 words total) So much for the padding, I had built up, not much of it left, but I’m still ahead of par by a bit and with the long weekend coming my way, I’m not worried at all.

And that is where I stopped posting these little snippets to Facebook.

So, if I haven’t completely scared you off writing, you should plan to join the fun the next time November comes around.

 

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