So... I just won NaNo for the first time. After four years
of trying.
Pre-NaNo, I was happy if a "book" reached 20
pages. I thought a page and a half was a decent length for a chapter. I just
did not have enough practice or understanding to really develop a story. Then I
discovered the art and joy of writing fanfiction, and I finally started taking
literature classes in high school, and the more I learned about writing, the
better my writing got, and the longer my stories grew.
Then I heard about this crazy fun thing where writers are
challenged to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days. For a few years I put
off doing it because it always seemed like I was right in the middle of a
project (or four) around November... Then finally, my chance came.
Year 1 (2011) I had just finished up college and still very
much attached to the writer's group I had started, which was always getting
fresh faces. A lot of them were doing NaNoWriMo, so I just decided to pull out
one of my ideas that I had crafted a premise for but never actually got around
to writing. That idea was titled Cipherstalker. My original plan was to just do
the challenge and track my word count for the fun of it, without planning ahead
of time beyond a vague sense of where the story could possibly go, and just see
what happened.
That was the year I discovered I was not a pantser. Or
rather, I was not the sort to just write willy-nilly. By Day 3, I simply had to
write down the plot that was spinning through my head or I was worried that I
would forget it. Also, what I ended up doing was setting a goal of 2K a day,
and only writing on my laptop in the evenings during the week. Of course,
November 30 came, and I only had about 36K. But I was ready to get on it the
next year!
Year 2 (2012), I was deep in the thick of writing
Juvenile-level (like ages 8-12) fiction, and SO much more fanfiction, and I
concocted this idea that seemed perfect for NaNoWriMo! So even though I thought
it up, I purposed not to write it till November...
Then I was chatting with college writing buddies over the
summer, and one of them was hitting really bad writer's block and could not
decide on a genre. I had just read Arabian Nights, and I was amazed at how the
stories in that book just kept going, one leading to another, and another—so I
suggested, if he could not decide on a genre, to just write all the genres:
write a story about a writer with writer's block who has incredible adventures
in each genre, which inspire him to write a book he genuinely enjoys that
becomes a bestseller.
This was in August... By September, the idea had festered in
my mind long enough that I started planning out how I would write such a story:
of course I would begin by introducing the writer and establishing the writer’s
block… but then as the writer moves through the genres, I figured the easiest
thing for me to do would be to have a similar plot for each genre, and it would
just look different because of the different context and theme. And only I
would have to know that the stories were basically the same. (Well, not
anymore, I guess!) The more I thought about it, the more this sounded like an
intriguing idea… and what was more, I could feasibly write multiple “genres” at
the same time, because each plot would be the same, so it was essentially “writer’s-block-proof.” I decided to title it A Writer's Tale.
Well, one think led to another, and I sat down on September 29 to just start
things out and see if I could get enough momentum in an intro… and next thing I
know, it’s October 29 and I’m writing the ending and I have no more idea for November
(because I had forgotten about my earlier idea by then). So that was a NaNoFAIL
that year.
Year 3 (2013) was the year I started this blog! Over the
summer, I started the Suggestion Box series, which was well-received and
popular among the participants (though precious few there were!) and came to a
close just two weeks before November. Now, that first time, what I had done was
take the individual lists (which contained a name, a place, a time, and an
object, all chosen by the submitter, for which I had no preview) and craft an
isolated scene from that. For November, then, I wanted to see if I couldn’t
make a big long story using all of the “Suggested Items” and write that. I
pooled all of the names, places, times, and objects and divided them into five
groups, allotting a minimum of 10K words for each part. It went well for the
first part, but as I kept writing, the parts grew shorter, and I found myself
arriving at November 29 and having to end the story at just 47K with no idea
where or how I was going to add those remaining 3K.
Halfway through, I suddenly remembered the idea I had
planned the year before and then forgotten about. Well, I told myself,
NaNoWriMo 2014, I know exactly what I am going to be doing!
And so, Year 4 (2014) I finally commenced writing “Clay Heroes”, the story of a young boy who makes figurines out of clay to defend him
from bullies, and they come to life and one of them ends up a villain who wants
to be his own master, and so the boy must find the confidence from the other
heroes to stand up to the villain and defeat him. The story went well enough;
it was my first time trying to participate in NaNo and work full-time, and so the first couple weeks I
lagged very far behind during the weekdays and then had to write like mad to
catch up during the weekdays. As with the Suggestion Box story, though, this
ended up much shorter than I anticipated, lasting only about 28K words. To make
up the difference, then, I simply resumed an old WIP called “The Last Inkweaver” that I had stopped writing over the summer (and I had actually been
quite “blocked” on for a few months before that) and found the inspiration to
finish strong by Friday, clocking in at the full 50,000 words by the 28th!
It was hard, most days, but I didn’t give up, even on the
days when I could only manage 500 words or so. Giving myself the goal of
“1K-A-Day” helped a lot, because usually, if I could reach 1,000 words, that
would get me into the middle of a scene where I could just keep writing till
I’d made up at least some of my deficit.
In the words of Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Even if I couldn’t quite manage it that day, I would just remind myself that I
always had tomorrow, right up until the very end.
Thanks for sticking with me this month, and stay tuned for
more fun writing entertainment from yours truly at Upstream Writer!
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