NaNo Wrap Up: 4 Things I learnt About Myself Through NaNo

So it is the end of NaNo. I didn’t manage to hit 100,000 words like I wanted to but I’m proud of myself anyway. Several days in a row I managed to hit 6,000 words and one day I even had a 10,000 word day. I tried for another one yesterday but sadly it was not meant to be. This month I began three different novels, I learnt to knit again, I gained some valuable work experience and I made some very important life choices. I also learnt some very important things about myself and my writing process;

1) I’m part plotter and part pantser
I like some detail before I start writing. I like to know, roughly what each chapter will involve and how the story will develop within it. A brief description of each chapter and various scenes is all I need to be able to start writing a story and have it go the way that I want. I cannot work off a vague idea, it’s fine for a couple of chapters but after that I need some clue as to where it’s going, even if it’s a general thing. But I can work best off a partially plotted storyline.

2) Too much detail kills my writing
My first idea for NaNo was very planned. Each scene was written in meticulous detail, ridiculously so, and once I started writing I started to hate it. My writing had nowhere to go, the characters had no room to develop and I just started to hate the story. I don’t want to hate my writing but I need to be able to have fun with it, to let it go off-track and wander in its own direction before I brought it back to the main storyline. So clearly over-detailed plotting is not for me.

3) My characters develop as I write.
My characters in o.S.a.M (which still needs a new name) were quite well detailed; I knew what they looked like, some of their history and a rough idea of their personalities. This was all before I started writing it. Once I started writing the novel though my characters grew, they developed bigger personalities and odd quirks (such as Will and Gabe’s friendship being reminiscent of Turk and JD in Scrubs) and their back-stories shifted into something that I didn’t even think of in the beginning (who knew Gabe was a prince of Labolai?!). The same happened for a contemporary fantasy police novel I started writing on Monday. I knew roughly what the characters were like but as I wrote they too developed and one even revealed that he had multiple personalities.

4) I start to go off track towards the end
For the last few days I’ve been reluctant to actually write anything even though I’ve not finished the novels. I think it may be because I’m focused on writing and not doing much else but now that I know November is almost over I’ve started planning what I plan to do once I’m free of writing each day.  Having to focus on just one thing at the expense of everything else is clearly not for me, I like the freedom of being able to work on what I want, when I want.

So there we go, 4 things I learnt about how I work when I was doing NaNo.

Oh and incidentally, right now I’m at 80,339 words and I still have 3 hours left of November 30^th. Maybe I’ll manage to up that, maybe not.

Keep Writing!

NaNoWriMo #28: Winning and Aiming Higher

This is just a quick check up post today. I won NaNoWriMo on Sunday night and got fully validated. Now I’m desperately trying to reach 100,000 words by Friday. I managed a 10,000 day yesterday and I’m aiming for the same again today.

The novel write of o.S.a.M is coming along well. I’m getting down important parts and a fair bit of dialogue but I’m a little worried that I’ve gotten too exposition-y. I’m working out stuff about Labolai and the world it’s set in as well as the magic system as I go so I tend to write down every little thing that I can think of. Actual world building is something that I plan to work on once NaNo is over. For now I’m hopping between stories and different chapter, starting a new one when I finally figure out how to start a new story and going back to others when I figure out where it’s going.

I’ve also started a new novel, one that I just make up as I go along. It’s an idea I got from watching too much Death Valley and I’m not really sure if it’s actually going anywhere. I have fun, lots of fun with it, just typing in any strange situation thing that I can think of and it fits because the world it’s set in is crazy enough for it.

I’ve completely left the first story behind, just leaving it sitting there on my hard drive. Sure I might go back to it at another point but for now I’m just including it as a failed experiment. I’d need to go back and take out the parts that are dares and work on the description and dialogue but the bare bones are there. It helps that I didn’t keep working on it even after I began to hate it. If I had done that there’s a good chance I would have failed to win NaNo at all.

As it stands I am currently at 67,152 words. By the end of tonight I hope to be at 77,000 or even possibly 80,000. How’s your NaNo going?

Keep Writing.

NaNoWriMo: Day #7 - Stalling and downers

NaNoWriMo has... stalled a bit for me. That’s really the only way I can describe it. I’m making sure I write daily, don’t get me wrong but it feels like the words are forced and I hate the story. No, actually it doesn’t feel like I hate the story. I actually hate the story. I don’t know why as I was really jazzed about it last week, I got loads of writing done, hitting 13,000 by the end of the first weekend. I think that may be the problem though, I’ve burnt out before I’ve barely begun. I’m trying to balance working 5/6 hours a day with an hour’s travelling time each day, the need for at least 8 hours sleep and writing an word count goal of 3000+ words a day. It’s too much. I can’t do it right now, not when I hate the story and would rather be doing other things.

I knew the story wasn’t quite right, particularly once I started adding all the dares. Some of them, are cool and have helped develop the plot some more, some are just fun inserts to right. If I’m brutally honest though I think they’re making the story suck. Suck so much that I think I’ll just leave them out from here onwards. Apart from the ones that really appeal to me. Despite feeling all this though I’ve kept going and this feeling of hatred towards that story is slowly creeping over me. I don’t want to hate the story, it actually seems like quite a good one but all these dares that I’ve added have just made it seem silly. The only answer is to take out the dares.

It probably doesn’t help that I’m getting all these ideas for The Darkling Watch, how I’m going to edit it and then a bunch of ideas for the o.S.a.M rework and other novels set in that world. I jot them down with the intent of coming back to them later but really all I want to do is write them now. I’m actually thinking about being a bit of a rebel, using The Death of Yggdrasill as practice and warm up each day before I start editing or rewriting The Darkling Watch. But I’m not ready to do that. I know The Darkling Watch isn’t finished in the first round of read-throughs. It’s not properly planned out. So there isn’t much I can really do except for hit each day’s word-goal and keep writing but ignore the silly parts of the story.

Maybe it is hormones, maybe it’s burn out or maybe it’s a completely other reason that I don’t know about. All I do know is that I refuse to let myself burn out or hate my novel, hate any of my novels. SO I’m just going to write the bare minimum I want to write until this weird mood lifts or I hit 50k. Whichever comes first.

Keep Writing.