The year of our lord 2018 marks my fourth attempt at the Legendary task of NaNoWriMo. The difference this year is that I fucking won.
I didn't start out this years challenge with high hopes. I expected myself to fizzle out around the 20,000 word mark as I usually did - blaming myself for not preparing enough, and blaming the fact that I was busy and tired and that my novel idea was terrible anyway. Honestly winning has come as such a huge surprise to me that I couldn't really muster up any feeling of pride or accomplishment when I verified my word count and the website flashed up the winner's page. I'm still more surprised than anything else.
However, underneath the slightly baffled feeling of oh my god I actually did the thing, there is a lot of pride. 2018 has been a year of development for me, and I think that winning NaNoWriMo really reflects the positive changes that have happened over the last twelve months. I've built a lot of resilience, and started to really focus on what's important to me. I'm working towards my goals even when they're difficult and a slog, and I'm allowing others to help me in a way that I've always been too proud to do before.
I thought I'd share a few things that really helped me this year. These are all habits and practises that are going to help me continue writing, as I attempt to turn my 50K word long pile of gibbering nonsense into a coherent first draft:
FIND A SACRED SPACE
I found it incredibly helpful to leave my house and write in coffee shops and pubs. There's something about being away from the laundry that needs doing and the TV that could so easily be watched that helps you focus your mind. You've come to this space to write, when you leave, you can do whatever you want, but right now all you need to do is the writing. Making an offline playlist of music to work to and putting my phone on aeroplane mode also helped me be more productive, and is actually something I'll be doing more often, even if I'm not writing.
GET USED TO FITTING IT IN
Conversely I also found that sometimes spending four hours in the back of a coffee shop with a moleskine and a cappuccino just wasn't practical, and if I had insisted that my writing could only be done in those dedicated pockets of time, I would never have finished. I sometimes had to write on trains, or while moving back and forth between my laptop and the stove as I cooked dinner. Writing eighty words in the morning while you wait for the kettle to boil is just as valuable as cranking out several thousand in a pub garden on a sunny weekend day.
IT'S GOING TO SUCK AND THAT'S OKAY
Sometimes you're going to be writing and it will be an absolute chore. It will be clunky and terrible, and you won't be sure if this scene is even going to make sense once you've worked out the ending properly. That's fine. Just keep writing. There's a very important phrase that goes you can't edit a blank page, and it's so true. The beauty of writing is that you can always change and edit what you've written, but you can't improve on something that doesn't exist. First drafts are designed to make you cringe, but they need to be produced before they can be turned into a finished manuscript.
ALLOW OTHERS TO HOLD YOU ACCOUNTABLE
ALLOW OTHERS TO HOLD YOU ACCOUNTABLE
One of the biggest changes this year is that I made my NaNo plans more public. I normally keep my attempts pretty hush, mostly because then nobody can see me fail, but I had decided this year to share my plans on F L Y N N, to share my progress daily on instagram, and to keep my boyfriend and friends updated on how it was going. While it can be difficult and sometimes uncomfortable to allow others to badger you about getting your words done, when you soften those walls it can be very helpful. My boyfriend was a wonderful source of encouragement, getting downright irritating at times when I was falling behind and a dear friend of mine, Isla, also won NaNoWriMo this year and we were each other's cheerleaders the whole way through. The NaNoWordSprints twitter feed was another great place to find support. I have a fiercely independent streak that makes me oddly prickly when others try to help me out, but this year I let myself be supported and encouraged by others, and it made all the difference.
BALANCE PLANNING AND INSPIRATION
When I started on November 1st, I had a loose outline for the first two acts. My characters were mostly named and I had some detailed scenes and plot points set out, but ultimately my goal was simply to ensure that I hit the end of each chapter in the right place, so I knew I was on track. Even so, sometimes characters grew in ways I didn't expect, and I found myself wandering into backstory and side plots a lot while the story developed, and the world built itself in my head. Plenty of what I wrote in November won't make it into any potential future manuscript, but it was valuable to write. It allowed me to explore my world with more depth, and understand my characters more, meaning that I can make better decisions in future writing. Obviously you want to follow a linear plotline, but sometimes those bursts of inspiration can prove valuable in their own right.
BALANCE PLANNING AND INSPIRATION
When I started on November 1st, I had a loose outline for the first two acts. My characters were mostly named and I had some detailed scenes and plot points set out, but ultimately my goal was simply to ensure that I hit the end of each chapter in the right place, so I knew I was on track. Even so, sometimes characters grew in ways I didn't expect, and I found myself wandering into backstory and side plots a lot while the story developed, and the world built itself in my head. Plenty of what I wrote in November won't make it into any potential future manuscript, but it was valuable to write. It allowed me to explore my world with more depth, and understand my characters more, meaning that I can make better decisions in future writing. Obviously you want to follow a linear plotline, but sometimes those bursts of inspiration can prove valuable in their own right.
PLANS
So now that I've finished NaNo, I genuinely think that the novel I was working on has potential, though it needs a lot of work and fine tuning. So in the new year I have a lot to get done if I want to have a manuscript ready any time soon. I am letting my brain (and my draft) rest until 2019, and then, in January, I will be pulling it back out and working on it again. Here are my plans for it in 2019:
. I will immerse myself in the fantasy genre, reading classics and new releases, and really getting a feel for what's out there, and where my story fits. I plan to read thirty full length fantasy novels over the year.
. I will go through my draft and fill in the gaps in my writing where I hit a plot hole, or the pacing was all wrong. (There are several points at which I wrote [THEN THEY ARRIVE AT THE CITY] and just pick up from the next chapter.)
. I will spend a lot more time building the world, the magic system, and the characters into deeper and more interesting constructs, and think more carefully about the story that I'm telling.
. I will make brutal edits to the first draft, and focus more on the pacing and overall scope of the story, rather than holding onto elements that I enjoyed writing, or think are 'interesting'.
. I will aim to end 2019 with a plot that I am happy with, and a manuscript that only needs editing for the quality of the writing, and fixing inconsistencies.
. I will immerse myself in the fantasy genre, reading classics and new releases, and really getting a feel for what's out there, and where my story fits. I plan to read thirty full length fantasy novels over the year.
. I will go through my draft and fill in the gaps in my writing where I hit a plot hole, or the pacing was all wrong. (There are several points at which I wrote [THEN THEY ARRIVE AT THE CITY] and just pick up from the next chapter.)
. I will spend a lot more time building the world, the magic system, and the characters into deeper and more interesting constructs, and think more carefully about the story that I'm telling.
. I will make brutal edits to the first draft, and focus more on the pacing and overall scope of the story, rather than holding onto elements that I enjoyed writing, or think are 'interesting'.
. I will aim to end 2019 with a plot that I am happy with, and a manuscript that only needs editing for the quality of the writing, and fixing inconsistencies.
So those are my thoughts on my NaNoWriMo win, and my plans for going forward. Let me know if you participated in NaNoWriMo, and how you found the experience!
Thank you for reading!
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