Because there’s no way you’ve read enough NaNo recaps already. 😉 Original Pic from Pixabay Yes, I did NaNoWriMo this year. I kep...

What I Learned from NaNoWriMo 2017

Alexa Mintah

12 Comments

Because there’s no way you’ve read enough NaNo recaps already. 😉

Original Pic from Pixabay

Yes, I did NaNoWriMo this year. I kept it quiet on the blog, because, well, there wasn’t much to talk about. I didn’t have one story I was super excited about and had been planning to work on since September; I just wanted to write something, because I had been editing for so long, I had completely fallen out of the habit of writing new words that weren’t going into a blog post. I wanted to change that, and November came around just in time: I made it my goal to write new not-blog words every single day. Ideally, I would get down some short stories I’d had brimming in my head for approximately ever, but honestly, I just wanted any words. Fanfic, diary entries, random thoughts, whatever. I wrote it all and I counted it all, because I wanted to remember what it felt like to write new words again.

And I did. Every single day in November, even when it was 11 PM and I had a school project to finish and I was so, so tired and I just wanted to go to bed, if I had not put down new words in the past 24 hours, then dang it, I was going to. And so I wrote.

And honestly, I’m really proud of that.

It was hard at the beginning, especially since I’d been out of it for so long; coming up with new ideas was like getting a 20-year-old computer to play a YouTube video: my brain would not load. I didn’t know how to outline, because that’s never been something that worked for me, and the natural flow of pantsing wasn’t coming to me either. I started to worry I’d lost my touch. Did I even know how to come up with these story things anymore? Would I have to spend the rest of my life just editing the ideas I’d already written? Maybe I would never be able to achieve that heart-pounding, wildly exciting, first-draft writing part again… What if… What if…

What if I was writing a historical, and I simply didn’t know enough about the history to supply the story.

So back to the drawing board I went. That story, as much as I love it and want to pursue it, is on the back burner while I study the time around it (pre-American revolution, if anyone’s interested, particularly from the British point of view). I started a new story, this one a fairytale retelling, where I knew enough about the basic fairytale to make up anything I wanted after that.

And that’s when it began to flow again. I was back in my element, writing randomness for the fun of it, coming up with ideas on the fly, learning with my characters as they learned to know themselves, discovering plot twists and new pieces the very second they did. Half the time, I’d have an idea when I sat down to write, only to have them take it a completely different way the moment my fingers touched the keyboard. But with this story, I didn’t care. I was just happy to experience this new novel with them.

I loved it. I love them. The story isn’t over, and I don’t know for sure where it’s going, and it’ll undoubtedly need editing, and I’ll hate it at some point, but for right now, I absolutely love it.

And that feels really good.

All-in-all, I wrote 25,000 words, most of that in one of the above stories, but a couple thousand are in a Harry Potter fanfic and a Thor: Ragnarok one (both of which my sister and I thought up together), and some are random words that I thought were deep at the time and may still be when I go back to read them. Regardless, I wrote. I wrote 25,000 words, 25,000 more than I had in October. I learned that sometimes (not often, but sometimes) the fix is super easy, and you just have to change your perspective. I learned that historicals require a lot of research (newsflash, right?) and I have to come prepared when writing them. I learned that this is one situation where my pantser’s brain has to be reined in; when writing real life, making stuff up is only going to take me so far. I learned that the problem wasn’t me as a writer. I learned I hadn’t lost my touch, but that I just needed practice and a shift in my approach. I learned to accept my own limits and not allow the perfectionism of NEEDING TO REACH 50,000 ruin the joy of reaching half that.

I learned how to write again. And that is the part that I am most excited about. 😊

What did you learn during NaNo this year? If you didn’t do it, tell me about a recent writing accomplishment and drop me a link if you have one! I’d love to hear about all of your endeavors. 😊

P.S.: another writing accomplishment I’m thrilled to spotlight is that one of my favorite contemporary books Double Negative by C. Lee McKenzie is in the running for TCK Publishing’s Reader’s Choice Awards! I got to interview Mrs. McKenzie yesterday on my review blog, and there are some really interesting tidbits, including author insight on the characters and illiteracy in America, if you want to check it out. Also, you can vote for Double Negative here (page 12), until the voting ends in three days on December 10th! Please do support this book; it is an incredible story and absolutely deserves to win. 😊

You may also like