NaNoWriMo

November begins tomorrow and with it starts National Novel Writing Month. This event pushes you to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It was an event I failed last year, my first year I officially took part. This year, I’m excited to learn from my failed attempt and, my success during this year’s July Camp NaNoWriMo, to complete the daunting word goal.

Last year, I was definitely a pantser and not having a full idea of what I was writing led me to my downfall. I started with a completely new idea partway through October, stemming from a lone image of a park ranger. The first few days into November were fine, but after the first 10 or so pages, it became a chore to continue writing. I tried to keep pushing, word by word to try and reach the 1,667 daily word count. When I fell short, I said “I’ll make it up on the weekend.” However, by the end of the month, I only wrote 15,000 words. It was a utter failure and honestly caused me to take a break from writing for a few weeks. I tried to be positive, I mean it was 15,000 words I didn’t have before, but I just couldn’t get over falling short of the goal.

Though it was a big factor in last year, my writing style is normally typing by the seat of my pants. I usually have 3 or 4 major plot points and figure out what goes between them as I write. This year, I have an outline. I’ve drafted an outline with several major and minor plot points, where I’ll be introducing characters, small ideas to incorporate throughout the story, new settings created, and my general line of conflict and resolution in mind.

Mentioned in my last post “Lost Work,” I had entered a writing contest with a first chapter I had found on my computer I thought was lost forever. Well, I have a few updates on it. Currently it is in the hands of beta-readers, a few I’ve received feedback on, and will be going through another round of revisions soon. I feel I’m a step closer to one day publishing, and I find it hard to believe that a writing contest helped fuel this fire.

And for this year’s NaNoWriMo, I’ll be writing book two! Having a cast of characters already established from book one will be a big help as I know them already, instead of trying to figure out how they tick as the story progresses. I can’t wait for tomorrow to hit and to start working on book two. I feel more prepared this year than yesterday and can’t wait for the end of the month and to see all the words I’ve written.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? First timer or a veteran? Let me know in the comments.

Have a good day and happy writing!