Whoo hoo!!! Nanowrimo is over! I didn’t really get to expand too much in the previous post but I’m sure you all already knew that. Those who were following that at least. XD I won at 50,044 words! The story I was working is (tentatively named) Decryption and the genre is Cyberpunk. I’m not listing a synopsis until I have the first draft completely written. ^_^;;
Anyways, I just wanted to list a few things that I learned while participating in my 2nd Nanowrimo and the first time that I won it! I’m very pleased with myself for getting that far but was disappointed at slacking the last two weeks only to make up the rest the last two days. lol But I did it and that’s what’s important.
What I learned about myself during Nanowrimo 2013:
- I can write 6k in a day if I push myself (set a new record for me and that’s with also going to work)
- I average 4k a day with working part time
- I write better in several sessions than all at once. (Preferably once in the morning and once in the evening)
- I do better writing when I plan or have a scene in mind (but I can write crap if I push myself but it’s ugly and goes no where)
- With that point, I prefer having a good outline than just pants-ing but I realize I’m capable of doing that too since I pants-ed this year’s writing
- I tend to be wordy
- I’m not capable of writing a whole novel within 50k when I don’t know what I’m doing with the story (I’m probably 1/3 through the novel at best)
- I prefer writing every other day unless I know I have something to write about (That’s why I need outlines. I know you shouldn’t wait for inspiration but when I do, you better watch out!)
- I’m not able to talk things out with others when I’m not sure of certain elements myself
- I’m easily distracted by the internet
- I can write with silence or music but I prefer music with low volume so I can hear myself think
- I can write at home or elsewhere but I do better when I’m alone. I should give writing with others more of a chance, I only did it a couple of times and I think I distracted others more than I wrote. lol
- I focus more on characters and their interactions and not so much on settings when I write
- I like to make sure spelling and punctuation are correct as I write. If not it bothers me until I fix it.
For you who like visuals, here’s the graph and my records of my adventure! I used and modified a version of a Nanowrimo Google Spreadsheet made by Hillarydepiano.com to fit my needs.
The graph below shows you how much I wrote per day. The green bars is my word count and the purple line/shading is where my word count should have been that day. I’m laughing at that huge stretch from the 21st to 30th where I wrote nearly nothing. (Shush at my use of my obnoxious favorite colors.)
Then for you number inclined followers, here’s the nitty gritty. The first column indicates how many words were my targeted words-per-day as I was following the Reverse Nanowrimo method which worked out well for me. I had 40k done by the second week! Well I pushed myself to have 40k by the 14th which explains why I wrote over 6k that day. I wanted to assure myself that I could write 20k per week if I wanted and I did so I’m happy. 🙂
Then I noticeably declined my word count to 0 for the last couple of weeks of November. No good excuses really besides family coming over and me not knowing where I wanted to go in the story so I procrastinated. lol I knew I could write 4k a day so when I only had to write about 2k-3k I wasn’t too worried even though my mom was pushing me to just finish it. lol Oh I was also reading a lot of books which probably was just more procrastinating but we’ll say it was a form of productivity, ok? Ok. lol
I was happy to find out that I can write this much. I wrote before in high school but never actually recorded how much I had written. I also wrote long hand before typing/editing it on the computer. I think I still prefer that way since I’m easily distracted on the computer.
Also once I had that outline, writing came easy and was a lot of fun for me. Too bad that story had changed into something different so it’s not usable but it still has a special place in my heart and hard drive. I still plan to write something similar to that story which I might use for a Camp Nanowrimo that will be coming up.
Anyways, sorry for that tangent, I do plan on writing an outline using this first draft. I’m also planning things a little better like character backgrounds and settings before I re-write it all. I would like to be able to further plot out books following this one. I’m not sure if it will be a trilogy or series but that is what the planning will be for but I’m pretty sure it won’t be a stand alone book. This is my plan in the next few months. I’m hoping to make myself a schedule and to follow it. I really want a finished project writing, comic, or otherwise. OTL
Well that’s all I have to share for my adventure of Nanowrimo 2013! I hope yours was as successful if not more! Do you guys have plans on continuing writing or are you editing in December?! Remember don’t start querying yet! Make sure your writing is polished!
Oh, for the record, in 2012 I was only able to write 12,219 words. Here’s a screenshot since I didn’t have a chart that I used to keep track of it then. The story is called Wildly Charming and was going to be my version of Beauty and the Beast.
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