One of the things that surprised me most about my successful attempt at NaNoWriMo this year was how... not hard it was. I won't say it was easy, but it was a lot easier than I expected. I think there were only two or three nights where I struggled to meet my goal. And yes, some nights I fell short. Not often enough to make it reaching the goal of 50,000 words a serious struggle, however.

My story isn't complete, and if I'm honest with myself, probably won't ever be. I might come back to it someday; as I said in my last post, I'm interested in seeing where it goes. I just have to find the discipline to sit and flesh it out. I've talked about the lack of discipline before. One of the things I've discovered recently is that if I'm given a deadline, I seem to strive to make that. I don't think it can be just me that sets the deadline: I had NaNoWriMo this time around, and last year about this time, I had LNA Does Audio Stuff's 12 Days of Creativity Challenge. It would seem I need an external source to get me motivated.

Maybe I can hire someone.

Some takeaways from NaNoWriMo:

• Sitting down and getting started is always the hardest part. Once I started writing, I often found that I was in the groove within a paragraph or two.
• Each night I would create a new chapter and write from a different person's perspective.
• I think a better approach would be to try and write a single character's view point up until a major plot point is achieved.
• Scrivener is the bee's knees for keeping my thoughts organized. I don't know how some people (e.g., my sister-in-law) can write in a single Word document.
• I tried writing in a coffee house but there simply too many distractions. I found that sitting at my dining room table, after the wife had gone off to bed, was my most productive time.
• I meant to try and write in the morning once, to see if my creative flow was any different, but never managed.

I might try it again in 2024. Maybe I'll need to blow the dust off the current story then and see if I can button it up.

I actually did it. 50,000 words. Well, as of this writing, 50,171. And I still have two days left.

I plan on continuing the story. There is still a bunch left to write. And it's been fun. I want to see how it ends.

I'll probably do a full write-up of the process later, but right now, I'm going to word work (I left the typo in, as I found it amusing) on some website stuff I've been putting off.

NaNoWriMo has progressed a lot better than I had expected, to be frank. I'm halfway through the 50,000 words, sitting at 25,062. A whole day early even. Go me!

It's been a bit of a revelation. During prior attempts at writing stories, I would usually have a basic idea of the story I wanted to write, typically a beginning, a middle, and maybe an end. Not this time, baby. I have been completely reliant on the pantser side of my writing persona and I'm fully embracing it. It literally started with a single sentence: "One thing about the end of the world, Dave thought. It makes for a hell of a weight loss program" That was it. I started my story all based around that one sentence. To tell the truth, it's been a lot more fruitful (and a lot more fun), than I expected. It's both scary and freeing to not know where the hell I'm going. I currently have 7 different characters and I simply write a chapter from each of the points of view. I don't even think I'm writing them in order, and instead will be relying on the excellent Scrivener software to help the organization once my novel is more complete (I'm being positive here and inferring when and not if)

Here's some basic stats, courtesy of my NaNoWriMo Profile Page (have to be a registered member to see this):

• 25062 out of 50000 words
• I've written 14 days in row (every single day!)
• My least productive day was Nov 4th, with only 492 words
• My most productive day was Nov 5th, with 3,271 words. Guessing I felt the need to make up from the day before.
• My average word count is 1,790 words a day.
• And I apparently have an average writing speed of 15 words per minute.

That last point seems odd, but I guess it is just an average after all. I do stop and take breaks, or look up synonyms on thesaurus.com, or try to plot out the next section. Even guilty of stopping writing to play a game on my phone. Gotta stop that.

I've also written more than 11,000 words than the last time I attempted NaNoWriMo.

There have been a couple of nights over the past two weeks where I haven't felt as energized to write. But I find if I go over the previous chapter of the character I'm going to write from, then it helps the flow start moving. And once I'm moving, it's easier to get up to speed. It's all about keeping my eye on the end goal for now.

One thousand, nine hundred and fifty one words tonight. It's more real if I type it completely out.

I was worried about not having a completely planned out story. I had a couple of characters and a couple of plot points. But nothing like a linear story line. And then I realized I don't necessarily need a complete story right now. I can write each chapter from a character's point of view, and then shuffle them around later. As an example, last night I wrote what I think will be the prelude or first chapter. Tonight I wrote what would likely be the fourth or fifth chapter. But that's OK. Thanks to Scrivener, I can shuffle things around with ease once I have a better idea of how the story is going to progress. I've never written this way before and it's strangely liberating. I'm just going to write these chapters out as the ideas come. I'll puzzle them all together later.

On a related note, I'm not going to update again until the middle of November at the earliest. I want to focus on the story for NaNoWriMo, and honestly who wants to read a simple "XXXX words today!" update everyday? I can use BlueSky or Mastedon for that.

1,707 words for my first day. Not the rocket launch I'd hoped, but not the failure to launch either. Rather than go with the previous story I had in place, I opted for something completely new to me. No outline, only the basic idea of a structure, pretty bare bones overall. It will be quite the effort to come up with 50,000 words by the end of the month based on what I have in my head so far.

But hey, if it was easy, everyone would do it. Not that I've done it.

Yet.