Friday 29 November 2013

NaNoWriMo 2013 Week 4

At this point, I'm on schedule to win NaNoWriMo today, and that feels pretty good. I'm probably not finished telling the story yet, but that's okay. The only goal of NaNoWriMo is to finish 50,000 words in 30 days, and I've done that this year.

I think I need NaNoWriMo. I've realised that. It gets me back on track, writing long-form fiction again, and sort of lets me check in with my skill levels. Am I getting better at writing? The answer this year is "yes, slightly and incrementally".

Something else I've learned this year is that writing from an outline doesn't (or didn't) work especially well for me. This might be because of how I did it. I don't know.

Lastly, I think I need to try new things. I don't want to keep rewriting this same book in slightly different forms. I want to be able to say "I've written three novels" next year, and "I've written four" the year after that, rather than "I've written two novels, but they're not really good and I keep rewriting them, but they're not getting better".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It feels pretty good to have gotten this far.
PPS - Last year's win didn't feel as real as this.

UPDATE: I'm done! I finished my 50,000 words on the train this morning.

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