Yes, you read that right. I participated in the 2013 NaNoWriMo Challenge. For those of you who do not know, NaNoWriMo is a yearly writing challenge that takes place every November. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writer’s Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words of an original work in the 30 days of November. This past November (2013) I participated for the very first time. My total word count: 50,182. Was it hard? Yes! Was it fun? Yes! Did I write an amazing, award winning, money earning, best seller? No…
How did I manage to write that many words? It is not as difficult as you might think. I made myself sit down and write 2000 words every single day. Well, that was my goal anyways. I averaged 1,667 words per day. I could usually write about 500 words in 15 minutes. The thing I had the hardest time with was writing in any sort of order. I knew what I wanted to write, but I was not entirely sure of the point or direction of the story. So I would simply write in snippets. This proved to be a very easy way of having something new to write about every time I sat down to write. The drawback was that at the end I had this great big jumble of words, but no clear story. I spent the month of December attempting to put the book into some sense of order and the goal was to write in the spots that I needed to connect the “snippets”. This proved waaaaayyy more difficult than I ever anticipated. I set the book aside and guess what? I have not touched it since.
One thing I had not anticipated when I began to write my novel was how much personal baggage writing digs up. It is impossible for me to write about a character experiencing heartache or grief or anger or sadness or what have you without it affecting me and my real life. My novel is loosely based on a real life experience I had in high school dealing with bullying. I found it affecting my self esteem so much. I thought I had put the past behind me and healed from what I had gone through (which is nothing NEAR as bad as what I made my main character endure). However, as I began this writing journey, I discovered that I was actually still very much affected by what I had experienced. It was still affected me today! My self esteem took a definite hit and I was somewhat depressed, which does not bode well for me continuing the book.
So, the question is, will I finish it? I do believe I will. And I want to work on it more this year. I do not know if I will publish it ever. But I know I do not want to stop writing. I have plans for a new story I would like to start writing. This time I am going to try to write in a linear plotline. At least I will have some sort of direction to my writing.
What a great post, I only found out about NaNo about half way through and i definitely want to participate this year. I agree with Julie, somewhere someone in the world needs to read your book because they will relate to your book on a whole new level.
Well done for meeting your word goal!
Thank you for sharing this post with us, it is so awesome to hear other people’s stories and experiences about writing.
Chene Sterckx recently posted…Audio Book Review: Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress #1) by Jeaniene Frost
Chene, starting in April, Nano is hosting another writing event. For the month of April you set your own word count goal and create your own challenge…but other than that, it is just like November National Writer’s Month. Just thought I would let you know in case you were wanting to trying it out and didn’t want to have to wait until next Novemeber.
Good for you! NaNo is a tricky beast, but it can be so helpful to get those creative juices flowing…you never know what can come of it!
Thanks Melissa!
See, this is why I think you really need to finish and release this book into the wild! It will be so relatable since it is based on real experiences. Also, since writing it brought back up a lot of the feelings, I’m sure you wrote that into your characters so they will be believable. I think if you experienced all that grief and anger, etc, then your reader will too. And isn’t that what you want?
I really just want it to have an ending…. but thanks. we shall see what comes to be.