What I Learned from NaNoWriMo 2023
How does a high school English teacher, cheer coach, and working mom of three pull off NaNoWriMo?
She doesn’t.
Or at least not the “normal” way.
For those who don’t know, November is known as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, for us writerly types. I have participated off and on in the past and faithfully for now the past three years in a row. The traditional NaNoWriMo challenge is to write 50,000 words in a month, or, in other words, to write a very rough draft of a novel. The first NaNoWriMo I truly tackled and stuck out for a good part of the month was in 2021 where I completed 11,582 words towards the sci-fi fantasy novel I ended up finishing last June.
Then, in 2022, I wrote 20,628 words toward a new novel idea I had. Prior to that November, I was deep in the woods on my sci-fi fantasy and needed a break to refresh my creativity. Following the 2022 NaNo, I did return to my fantasy novel and complete it, as mentioned above, so my plan worked! This year, my sci-fi fantasy novel was off with beta readers, so I returned to my NaNoWriMo project from 2022 with plans to finish the draft and added another 19,713 words.
A common theme you may have noticed about the NaNo projects of the past three years is that not one of them even came close to the 50,000 word goal. Some authors do “win,” hitting those 50,000 words, and sometimes I am rather envious at how they manage to pull it off. However, I have never participated in NaNoWriMo traditionally, meaning instead of setting that 50,000 goal for myself, I set an alternative goal and then use the excitement and camaraderie and accountability of those participating in NaNoWriMo to drive my productivity.
Last year, my goal was to hit 25,000 words, and I came up about 4500 words shy of that. I didn’t write every day either. I had missed a couple days at the beginning of November and then again during the Thanksgiving time. However, I was pretty excited to hit over 20,000 words as that was nearly double my previous year’s word count. So. This year, I decided to set a goal of writing every single day instead of worrying about a certain word count. And I did it. I did not miss one single day of writing for the entire month of November. However, my word count came out less, and about 2/3 of the way into the month I stopped writing on my current project, so not all the words I wrote this November of 2023 were for my second book. About ¼ of them are actually for a third book.
Why the switch? I hit a pretty big speed bump that derailed my writing and creativity. While, I did write every day, there were many days that all I could accomplish were a couple hundred words, and one particularly hard night I sat down and wrote only 98 words and called it quits. You see, I was determined to not miss a day, but I was also creatively stretched too thin. Not only was I participating in NaNoWriMo this November, but I was also processing first quarter essays and grades and kicking off second quarter. My daughter’s cheer team that I coach ramped up practices, and of course don’t forget Thanksgiving.
Then, as if all that wasn’t enough, in November were the announcements of two different writing contests that I had submitted to. Unfortunately, I was not a finalist in either one. I was rather discouraged with little to show for my efforts, so even with my dogged determination to meet my NaNoWriMo goal this year to write every single day, my word count was lower and less inspired than last year.
My takeaway?
Goals are good, and make a plan to celebrate their achievement. I did hit my goal, and it gave me something to be proud of even when overall it had been a very discouraging and difficult month. My writer’s group cheered me on and encouraged me in hitting that, even when I was feeling disappointed. I needed to celebrate!
I probably should have had a plan B in mind for a better way to process and deal with the loss of two writer’s contests. Failing to accomplish anything in other one felt like a double-whammy and made me question why I was working so hard to write this month.
Writing for thirty days straight stretched me thin. I took a full week and a half off from writing following NaNoWriMo because I needed the break. It’s no wonder that I was a little more successful in my word count in 2022 even though I didn’t write everyday. It was probably those breaks that allowed the story time to stir and cultivate itself in my brain and spill out onto the page. Breaks and rest are a good thing as long as you have structure and a plan to return and not abandon the project altogether.
So, Will I do NaNoWriMo next year? Honestly, I am undecided. I want to have a thriving writing life, and I am not sure which book I will be in the middle of next fall. We will see if a word generation and dump is what I should be doing next November or if actually I should be deep into some other phase of my writing, such as editing. For now, I am holding NaNoWriMo 2024 loosely, but am still proud of my daily writing habit and for adding another 19,713 words to my projects.
