My first NaNoWriMo: Success & Failure

Writing novels ain’t easy.

Photo: Timeline scribbles from Jan 2010 for the genesis of The Package, my first NaNoWriMo project in Nov 2018.

I knew that my first NaNoWriMo would be a tough commitment, writing 50,000 words in one month. I didn’t win and that is a failure. What I learned was a success — conquering the fear of starting. Also learned? It ain’t easy writing novels.

NaNoWriMo. I am writing this one day after NaNoWriMo ended. For those who do not know of this challenge, it is an annual event that invites authors to write 50,000 words in one month towards any type of book project. Sort of a quick start on your novel, if you wish. Challenge is an appropriate word here. So is time, life, and “I’m too busy, how am I going to do this?”

I am proud of the 21,000 words that I did manage to write, though the words and story are rather ordinary and will need a great amount of work to get anywhere close to a first novel. The success was simply starting and making the attempt — getting past the fear of failure and, despite the time-pressures of life that we all face, managing to write on some of the days in this one-month November challenge.

I do love the concept and challenge of NaNoWriMo and only discovered this event this year. (I donated $50 right at the beginning to show my support.)

The stats. I joined the NaNoWriMo challenge four hours before the midnight chime of Nov 1. By Nov 30, I had chalked up about 21,000 words, well short of the 50,000 to win a personal award. I kept stats. I didn’t start writing for the first five days. I wrote zero words on another eight days. That’s 13 days of no writing. For 17 days, I averaged about 1,200 words a day mostly in a one-plus hour a day sprint while at my favorite Barnes & Noble cafe with coffee and pastry. Usually starting between 7–8 pm. Yes, I was tired at the end of the day but that’s ok.

Writing. I actually feel comfortable writing and enjoy the writing process (as part therapy) to get ideas out of my head. Initially, so that I might sleep a bit better — one reason I started writing in marble notebooks. Take a business idea and constantly write down more thoughts and ideas about it. Paper writing. Writing on computers and especially with iPad apps. Also journals, though not daily enough to be life journals. Writing is good for the soul and your brain.

And…an aside.

Writing for a living. I have written for part of my living. I was a music editor for more than 12 years for an educational publisher — the writing emphasis being on content, teaching pedagogy, and editing author content to house style, many specs, and many other guidelines. My grammar was ok but not perfect. My writing skills were fine for instructional writing. No storylines or character development required. I did have pretty good computer, software, and Filemaker database skills that made up for the grammar stuff. I was the tech guy. My background included teaching music for six years in middle school, a degree in music education, and teaching music during my post-graduate work as well. More content experience than writing experience.

The point of the paragraph above is that you can make a living through writing outlets if you have content expertise or other attributes in that field of writing. Basic writing skills will quickly develop to meet the needs of your writing career. One note though—the career of an editor is not just editing the words of others, it often entails everything “editorially” (and more) to get a product published.

Back to NaNoWriMo.

I like to write. It relaxes me.

Why NaNoWriMo? Here is a little backstory on why I started this particular NaNoWriMo project in Nov 2018. Earlier, I had found a red sketchbook with a dozen pages of notes in it. Notes from 2003 included some early book ideas, in 2010 one of the book concepts was for a series of seven thriller books that would rival…well, something. These were only fleeting concepts for a bunch of books.

In the same book were hand-sketched timelines from 2010. These had little scribbles for scenes for a couple of these books. Book 1 was called The Package and had to do with terrorism around the world and an eventual package that was trying to make its way to the U.S. I remember that I transcribed these scribbles into an old database. I found those a long time ago and just had to find them again.

The NaNoWriMo project was meant to say to myself, I’ve been BS-ing for many years on ideas but never 100% completing many of them. Time to put the pedal to the metal. Put up or shut up, John.

Here are some of my takeaways from this first NaNoWriMo.

• Time. TIME and LIFE are the enemies of writing. My new belief is that to be a full-time best-selling author who lives off of book income, you need to be a full-time best-selling author who has the time to write books that make income. Philosophical, am I.
• Workspace. You need a quiet work-space, desk, and computer where you can work distraction free. No TVs on the wall above your computer. Now, you know why I like the local B&N.
• Spontaneous writing. For NaNoWriMo, I wrote off the top-of-my-head using a sentence or two from the ideas written in 2003 and 2010. There was no planning or research or storyline or anything before I started writing.
• Just start — to get past fear. Spontaneous writing is good. As NaNoWriMo encourages you, spontaneous writing and the process of starting to write is a liberating fear-conquering experience. Do it. Realize it is not easy to write this way without planning but that is ok.
• Generic background & concept. After writing a while, I realized that my spontaneous writing was more of the generic idea or concept of the chapter sentence. Sometimes it was background as if I was just telling the reader why something was happening. Again, no planning may be the cause.
• Need action, detail & dialog. The scenes contained little action detail and very sparse (and horrible) dialog. If I compared my writing to a thriller I was reading, my writing would have a suicide bomber in a marketplace, not the exciting and longer continual build up of action found in thrillers. These often have more detail that you add to extend the excitement. Of course, dialog needs to go beyond the basic, “What’s your sitrep, Joe?” “Hit ‘em.”
• Ideas are great. I’m a believer in “ideas are good” and not the antithesis “ideas are cheap” school of thought. Many people don’t have ideas, so if you have them, all the better. Although the stealing of concepts or ideas is prevalent in modern society and especially with the Internet, you can work on your idea, write, and self-publish your work. YOU own it and no one can take it from you.
• A novel is truly complex. Reflections. I had some idea. I had no idea. I do read a lot and did know this. However, my head is still spinning. Yet, it is exciting to possibly learn how to build and structure a novel, characters, and storylines. And, I am an OLD person. If you are young, start now.
• No structure is more difficult. No storylines, no characters, no names — yep, that’s what happens when you don’t plan. Yet, you can get ideas down. My writing included a lot of notes to myself (check, research, name character, location info, need action & dialog, and so on.)
• Planning is required. When you write with no structure, as I did, your first writing will often duplicate ideas and likely be rather bland or ordinary. I had lots of scenes with a sentence describing the scene (over 20 scenes) and they had a generic commonality but they did not truly connect. I would have to go back and weave something together. How would you do this? That is a perplexing question.
• Good authors deserve credit and your money. If NaNoWriMo teaches you nothing except that good authors deserve every royalty and self-published dollar they make, then it has succeeded. Buy books. Read them. Support your favorite authors. I buy hardback print books and usually read more than 24 books a year.
• Writing under deadline. There are reasons why a deadline is good. It creates a need to finish something by a certain date. We had this in educational publishing. NaNoWriMo has this as well. Without the deadlines, say over the next few months, I am certain that I will write less on this particular topic though this post is meant to be a reminder to myself.
• NaNoWriMo. I wish I would have discovered this event sooner. What a great way to encourage people with a desire to write and become authors, and authors who needed to write more, to just write. Wonderful.

Oops, Barnes & Noble is closing and my coffee is finished. See what I mean about a quiet workspace? Typing this on an iPad Pro (1st gen.) with the Apple keyboard is a great way to write a book. However, editing a book is much easier and faster with a computer and a mouse rather than the bubble-editing when selecting text on an iPad. Otherwise, the iPad is a great writing device.

I hope you enjoyed my little journey.

I only hope that I will have the perseverance and time to continue this first novel with some type of rewrite and conclusion over the coming months. Other projects will intervene but I think NaNoWriMo has given me an inspiring start. Thanks NaNoWriMo.

If I keep this up, book number seven should be GREAT!

John

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