NaNoWriMo not so much Win
I didn't finish NaNoWriMo. I wrote just under 20K, which is not horrible but not the 50K goal, either. I knew when I started that November is not prime writing time for me. There's too much family stuff and home school to do, too many dance practices, holiday planning and other stuff to get in the way of writing time.
So I have 20K of a story I'm really excited about, and I think I pretty much despise 15K of the actual writing. The prose seems rough and wooden to me. Some of the character's voices blend together, even though I have really clear ideas in my head about who they are and what they sound like. Descriptive passages come off like bits of a grandma's travelogue. It reminds me of an awful middle-grade reader designed to educate through fiction. I always hated those.
There are always people who will pounce in with the well-meaning "it's a first draft,just write! Don't edit your first draft!" comments. Please, don't. If that works for you, I think you should go for it and blast on through without looking back until you hit "the end". My own process is more organic than that. I need what I've already written to be sound so that I can build the rest of the story on it. Shitty first drafts do me more harm than good, not even taking into consideration how they depress me and send me into writing avoidance. I don't expect or need my first drafts to be perfect, sparkling, typo-free works of art. But I do need them to not suck.
I don't know what it is about NaNo that elicits sucky writing from me, either. I've written a lot more words in less time, so it's not simply an issue of speed. Something about the very activity of NaNo makes my writing process go haywire. As much as I love the idea of NaNo, the practice collapses for me. If I can't figure out why, I'm going to have to give up on the NaNoWriMo, except as an interested bystander/cheerleader.
So I have 20K of a story I'm really excited about, and I think I pretty much despise 15K of the actual writing. The prose seems rough and wooden to me. Some of the character's voices blend together, even though I have really clear ideas in my head about who they are and what they sound like. Descriptive passages come off like bits of a grandma's travelogue. It reminds me of an awful middle-grade reader designed to educate through fiction. I always hated those.
There are always people who will pounce in with the well-meaning "it's a first draft,just write! Don't edit your first draft!" comments. Please, don't. If that works for you, I think you should go for it and blast on through without looking back until you hit "the end". My own process is more organic than that. I need what I've already written to be sound so that I can build the rest of the story on it. Shitty first drafts do me more harm than good, not even taking into consideration how they depress me and send me into writing avoidance. I don't expect or need my first drafts to be perfect, sparkling, typo-free works of art. But I do need them to not suck.
I don't know what it is about NaNo that elicits sucky writing from me, either. I've written a lot more words in less time, so it's not simply an issue of speed. Something about the very activity of NaNo makes my writing process go haywire. As much as I love the idea of NaNo, the practice collapses for me. If I can't figure out why, I'm going to have to give up on the NaNoWriMo, except as an interested bystander/cheerleader.