NaNo 2020 Review

So I've made it through NaNoWriMo. I did not win. And just for anyone not familiar with NaNo, "winning" just means you wrote 50,000 words. You get a PDF certificate that says you won. It's not a competition where your work is judged. You don't get your book published. You just have a whole bunch of words that you wrote, that you can edit into something better, if you want to. It's a challenge, not a competition.

Anyway, I didn't write 50,000 words. I wrote 33,007. Honestly, not bad. Some of it was not complete crap. But more importantly, I learned a valuable lesson.

I am not a pantser.

That is, a person who writes by the seat of their pants, making it all up as they go. I keep trying to be one. Because outlining is hard and tedious and boring. But after a month of barely scraping by, sometimes only writing 300 words in a day, trying to wrench this story out of the ether… it's clear that pantsing is not my strong suit.

So, having abandoned the quest for 50,000, I set my sights on 30,000. I stopped trying to drag out the story, and let it flow toward its inevitable conclusion. I knew how I wanted it to end. I figured that out a couple of days ago. So I let it happen. I knew what I needed to write, I know the events that needed to unfold.

And I wrote 4,000 words in one day. The very last day, but still. Clearly I can write that much when I know what I'm supposed to be writing. I've just been fighting against it, because I'm too lazy to outline. So either I can sit down and plot out the story, or I can muddle through it at a snail's pace.

Moral of the story: All my writing problems are of my own design.

I suppose when I get back to my vampire novel, it should be easier since I already have most of an outline. Should be.

But I'm not going to jump back into that just yet. I'm going to take a bit of writing break, and finish reading some books that I've had sitting around for months. So I'm not sure when I'll next have something to report.

I'll see you… sometime. Maybe in 2021.