NaNoWriMo Debriefing

I’ve had a day or so to come off my NaNo high, so here are some thoughts about the experience.

• A 50,000 word first draft in one month is not an impossible task.
• A 50,000 word draft in a month takes consistent output.
• Taking notes and thinking quite a bit about the story before starting the writing (following the NaNo rules) was very helpful. When November 1 hit, I was raring to go.
• Robin Perini, I owe you one. Your plot diagram from this summer’s Discovering Story Magic workshop at RWA National saved my butt.
• Having to work that quickly stifles my picky internal editor, which in my case is a good thing.
• It is very difficult for me to type messily. I keep wanting to go back and futz with stuff.
• When it was 10:00 pm on the last day of NaNo and I had about 2,000 words still to go, I was able to smack that typing-corrector into submission, thank God.
• In college, I read an essay about the creative process that said that Mozart would compose everything in his head, rethinking and testing combinations of instruments, notes, etc. When he was happy with the result, he would sit down with paper and ink and transcribe the whole thing. I’m no Mozart, but my process is very similar. I was thinking about the story much of the time, but not actually writing anything down. Until the last day, that is.I finished NaNo and won by writing 13,203 words in a 24-hour period. That’s a hell of a kick.
• The sky really doesn’t fall in if you let the housekeeping go for a month. But it is a good thing that Target’s open every day until 10 in case you need new underwear. Ha!

I’m really pleased with what happened this past month. I’m going to let the draft percolate during the holidays, then tackle the mess in the new year. Dream Agent says to go ahead and send a polished proposal, so that’ll be job one. At least I know the main story, so the synopsis will be a piece of cake! The Five Step Plan is very rough, and I have about four single-spaced pages of notes to myself of things I need to go back, review, and change before it hits the light of day. But one thing I have now that I didn’t have on Halloween is something to work with. I hadn’t been productive in some time, and NaNo helped me clear the logjam. Who knows? Maybe this is how I’ll write a novel every year. Can’t hurt!