NaNoWriMo
So...
I participated. I won (barely making the 50k) and I learned a few things.
The first of those is that I'll be unlikely to participate again. Except for showing me that I don't function like this I got little else out of the actual writing (I will have to ditch 85% of what I wrote and have to rewrite the rest heavily). So it's not as if I even got a crappy novel out of it, it's not even a 1/4th into the book!
Some further things I learned:
- my limits are 1,000-1,500 words per day, and nothing written AFTER 10 o'clock
- I like it slower
- I need the ability to pause a day or two occasionally
- I'm not able to write too disjointedly
It was Dick Francis (whom I adore btw), who said he wrote one sentence and honed it until it was perfect. Then he wrote another, and adjusted it until it is perfect. And one more and more until there was a novel.
I'm not sure whether or not I should take this at face value, but what is definite: that, precisely THAT, is the way I write.
I don't do 1st or 2nd drafts, no drafts indeed - I write practically copy. I do this pretty slowly, when it flows it's never more than 1-2k of words a day, and rarely more than 2-3 days in a row. I get up very early in the morning, read what I wrote the day before, make necessary corrections, proofread and alter what I don't like with one day distance, all of which puts me in the mood, and then I write my 1-2 thousand words and am done for the day. After a while I have my story. No, it's not at all a first draft. I sold these stories and a couple of scripts without reviewing them again, so that's how I know. No editor ever wanted any major changes, I got to omit or add a scene maybe, but that usually was it so far.
So, my first attempt at writing the way people say you "should" write resulted in nothing worth the time and energy I spent on it. Just goes to tell that there's not a uniform method for everyone...