NaNoWriMo: I Did It
I won.
Thirty days, fifty thousand words, and even with some really bad days and downtime in there.
But, I did it. For the first time ever, I finished NaNoWriMo. I went into this feeling like a cheater, or like it didn't really count because what I'm writing is a work of fan fiction. However, I chugged and slaved over this fan fic like I have anything else I've ever written, perhaps more so because it was a new fandom and new characters. I went in with a vague and basic idea, and at 50K words, the story wasn't doing nearly what I thought it would do, and the road it took was so meandering that it never got to the place I wanted it . . . but I did get 50,000 words.
It's not as easy as it sounds.
One of the things I had to do was turn off my inner editor. Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't. The hardest part was just remembering that it didn't matter what I wrote so long as I wrote, that fixing it could come later. That editing comes later, when it's finished.
I'm not finished yet. I looked at my (vague) plan and realized if I stick to it, the fic will never be finished. So, it's getting a sequel. Yes, I do believe that I can really do it . . . because I've done it once already. However, before then I have to wind up the very last chapter. Then I have to go back and re-read. And edit and . . . yeah, I have a lot of work ahead of me. After putting so much blood, sweat and tears into this (or at least hours upon hours), I do want to present it to the world as a finished product.
Maybe this weekend, I'll throw an excerpt up on
fantasy_echoes.
Anyway, I can say that I'm a winner. I won NaNoWriMo.
This entry was originally posted at http://fikgirl.dreamwidth.org/189661.html. If you have a Dreamwidth account, please comment there using that account. If you don't have a Dreamwidth account, please comment there using OpenID.
Thirty days, fifty thousand words, and even with some really bad days and downtime in there.
But, I did it. For the first time ever, I finished NaNoWriMo. I went into this feeling like a cheater, or like it didn't really count because what I'm writing is a work of fan fiction. However, I chugged and slaved over this fan fic like I have anything else I've ever written, perhaps more so because it was a new fandom and new characters. I went in with a vague and basic idea, and at 50K words, the story wasn't doing nearly what I thought it would do, and the road it took was so meandering that it never got to the place I wanted it . . . but I did get 50,000 words.
It's not as easy as it sounds.
One of the things I had to do was turn off my inner editor. Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't. The hardest part was just remembering that it didn't matter what I wrote so long as I wrote, that fixing it could come later. That editing comes later, when it's finished.
I'm not finished yet. I looked at my (vague) plan and realized if I stick to it, the fic will never be finished. So, it's getting a sequel. Yes, I do believe that I can really do it . . . because I've done it once already. However, before then I have to wind up the very last chapter. Then I have to go back and re-read. And edit and . . . yeah, I have a lot of work ahead of me. After putting so much blood, sweat and tears into this (or at least hours upon hours), I do want to present it to the world as a finished product.
Maybe this weekend, I'll throw an excerpt up on
fantasy_echoes.
Anyway, I can say that I'm a winner. I won NaNoWriMo.
This entry was originally posted at http://fikgirl.dreamwidth.org/189661.html. If you have a Dreamwidth account, please comment there using that account. If you don't have a Dreamwidth account, please comment there using OpenID.