Well, you win some…
And I’m not even going to finish that line.
Earlier I mentioned that, while not “officially” signing up for NaNoWriMo, I was going to try and give it a shot anyway.
I fell way short.
How short? Out of the attempted 50,000 words, at the final second of November, I had around 13,000 words.
That’s 13,000 words that I didn’t have at the beginning of the month. I refuse to call that a loss.
So here is my breakdown and what I came away with from this experiment:
I came away with 13,000 words. Yeah, I did already mention that, but that’s important.
In ten months, that’s 130,000 words.
In addition to the 13,000 words, I came away from November with new insight into my process. I am not the kind of writer that can write solely to a word count. During the late days of November, after I had given up on making it to 50,000, I printed out what I had and I started to read through it, making some editing notes along the way.
As I read, I could tell where I was struggling to hit 1667 words. I was repeating myself, adding unnecessary information. Padding.
Once that started, I could also tell where I stopped having fun.
As it turns out, when I gutted those parts, I started seeing opportunities to add depth. I was able to turn a floating corpse into someone with a past. A past that intersected, maybe not dramatically, but more than simply tangentially with my main character.
The word count was getting in the way of the words.
What else did I come away with?
I came out of November with a writing partner. Now this isn’t someone that I’m co-writing books with – although that option isn’t off the table. This is someone with whom I am checking in every week, we email each other about how the week went. What we’re doing, what the next steps are, etc. We are there to offer encouragement, be a sounding board, a shoulder, and (if necessary) a kick in the pants.
We tried it for November and it turned out to work really well and I’m glad we’re going to continue.
So there you have it. I didn’t end the month with 50,000 words, but I did come away with so much more.
Of course none of that kept me from jumping into Nephele Tempest’s December writing challenge:
Write every day in December. Yes, even those days. No word count involved. Write. Even if it’s only one word.
Write. Every. Day
So far, I’m 1 for 1. I’ll let you know how I’m doing next Friday.
Till then, be safe Y’All.
Time: 7:28 Pm – ish
Music: Epica – White Waters
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