Pages

Monday, December 1, 2014

I Failed NaNoWriMo....

That is to say, I did not reach the goal of 50,000 words written in the month of November. I also didn't write every day, which was my personal goal. Life gets in the way sometimes (lovely excuse to throw out there, eh?) but I DID however gain some knowledge about writing for next year. So here's my list of things I learned.

1) Think of an idea in advance - I had less than a week to come up with a decently solid idea that I could spend a month writing about. Do you know how hard that is!?! I pretty much had to choose the first idea I could think of, which doesn't exactly mean I was thrilled to be writing it. Do me a favour, next time you participate, go into it with a half formed idea at least!

2) Prep is good - Because I left my idea making to the last minute, I also had no idea who my characters were, where they lived, or what the hell was going on with them. I am definitely a prepper. In order for me to write, I need to know who my characters are so I can get into their brains. I can't do that if I don't even have their names sorted out.

3) Discipline is necessary - I gave up (yes I'll admit it) fairly early on because I accidentally skipped one day, which consciously turned into two, which meant by the end of the third day I was a couple thousand words behind, and it felt like I'd never catch up. So I admitted defeat a head of time. I think maybe next time I try and tackle something like this, I'll put a calendar up on the wall with times I've blocked out to write instead of hoping time shows up each day. That never happens.

Those are the three main things I learned this November. Hopefully I can do better next time! I hope everyone else had a ton of fun and reached their word counts, or have a half formed novel that they will continue to work on.

Now, what shall I do with this here blog...