Post NaNo musings
By Kathleen Bolton | December 3, 2007 |
So NaNo is over and I’m happy because now I can stop feeling like a failure for not completing my 1600 words-a-day quota. There’s plenty of post-NaNo restrospecting going on, and some pretty cool virtual parties to attend, so even if you didn’t make the goal, there are ways to still feel good about participating in this insane endeavor.
My good writing buddy Elena Greene turned me onto the National Novel Finishing Month website. The idea behind NaNoFiMo is to give writers a challenge to finish a partially-written novel. Sounds like a good distraction from holiday bedlam to me.
This year I was a more careful with my NaNo writing in that I’d outlined an actual plot before I started, and upon reading over the draft I see that it doesn’t totally suck (funny how plotting helps). Last year’s NaNo draft had to be chucked en toto because it was ridiculous. There’s a canyon between cranking out words to meet a quota and writing usable prose that will become the foundations of a novel. I wanted the latter, and though I didn’t get anywhere near 50,000 words, I’m pretty happy with what I do have.
I’m seriously toying with signing up for NaNoFiMo. Anyone else crazy enough to join me?
Art by darkangel.
Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.
She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.
There’s a canyon between cranking out words to meet a quota and writing usable prose that will become the foundations of a novel. I wanted the latter, and though I didn’t get anywhere near 50,000 words, I’m pretty happy with what I do have.
Congrats on your achievement!
Different writing processes going on here. I made it to 50K but wouldn’t say I crank out words to meet a quota. Instead, the quota forces me to keep tackling scene after scene, focusing on plot and characterization and ignoring grammar and word choices. I didn’t generate much usable prose but I did get a lot of new ideas. So I’m happy too! I’m going to blog some more on this at the Riskies on Wednesday.
As to NaNoFiMo, obviously I have signed up. Some good forums, though I miss the nifty NaNoWriMo features such as the progress bar graph. I’ve just figured out how to make Excel do something similar.
I made it to 50k, and the story’s almost done. I didn’t have a lot of plotting done beforehand, but I sort of knew how it would end, and I think I’ve gotten there. Someday I’d love to turn it into an actual book, but I’d either have to cut a lot down or find 20,000 extra words…
I always have a good time with NaNo, and I even got a free dinner out of it, because my fellow regional writers treated myself and my co-ML at the TGIO party. Good times.
Now to think up what I’ll write next year…
Not really my area of expertise, but I would think that quality rather than quantity has to be the way ahead.
Cheers
I’m always mad either way. Either I’m ticked because I didn’t power through more scenes, or I’m nauseated at how much I have to re-write. So I’ll never be 100% pleased. ;-)
I didn’t bother with nano this moth, instead doing mini-nano at LJ.
Thanks for the link for the site above. I got two I’d like to make something of.
It’s not like there’s any riveting TV going.
Congrats, Kath and Elena and Jennifer and everyone else who participated in NaNo, for getting through it regardless of passing the 50k mark. It’s a hard task!
Good point about the TV, astrothsknot. :)
I’m always mad either way. Either I’m ticked because I didn’t power through more scenes, or I’m nauseated at how much I have to re-write. So I’ll never be 100% pleased.
LOL, Kathleen. I’m sure if there were a magic formula for writing quick and beautiful first draft you folks at WU would have informed us of it already! :)
I, uh… Didn’t make it. Not even close. And most of what I did write is, yes, garbage. BUT — I learned a lot about several of my characters, and their relationships to characters in other stories, and I’m feeling good about re-starting this story when I wind another project down. So, I wouldn’t say my first NaNo was a failure — just a learning experience. (One of the things I learned is that you can fill up a remarkable number of pages with description and background of characters you’ve just met yourself, but it doesn’t do much for moving the story forward.)
Now, having just wrapped up NaNoWriMO and NaBloPoMo (which I did complete, though I admit to having backdated a couple of posts), do I want to sign myself up for NaNoFiMo? Um… I’ll have to think about that one.