NaNo failure
November is not quite over yet, but I'm throwing in the towel on my attempt at NaNoWriMo. At the moment I'm sitting on 9,553 words, but intend to break 10k before the month is over. I'm probably going to ramble a bit and I doubt all y'all care, so this is getting a cut or two.
I think I failed for a number of reasons. But the reason I'm choosing to blame most is my job. I hit my word count on the first day and then servers died and I found myself working late for most of the first week of the month. As I mentioned in the previous post I was taking the last to weeks of the month off so I'd have time to nano, so I didn't think that working late was that big of a problem. In terms of free time it wasn't so bad, I just had to work twice as hard when I had time allotted. Work interfered again as I worked overtime making sure things would be ready for me to take off for a couple weeks. I'll likely have to make up for work not done while I was out. (I'd like to mention that in the 11 days I've been off I've not received emails or phone calls from my boss on 2 or 3 of those.)
Anyway, this post is supposed to be about nano, so I'll stop talking about my job. Let's just say that it killed the first two weeks of november. Aside from Nov 1, I found time to write one other time during the first two weeks. I think I managed 2,200 or so words then. That's sad for two days of work, let alone two weeks. While I did in fact have enough time left after that, it was crazy demoralizing. It killed all the enthusiasm and momentum I'd built up.
There were other problems too. I rediscovered my addiction for Angband. I kinda forgot I'd have to go to thanksgiving, so that ate a few days. Oh and I got really into season 2 of Lost, which definitely slowed me down. Finally, kalliejenn2 distracted me quite a bit too, but I'm certainly not complaining about that ;) .
The big problem though was that I was unprepared. My story could be explained in a paragraph and there really wasn't much more going on. It wasn't even a very interesting paragraph. I'd hoped to just make up fun dialog. Time restrictions or not I was lucky to get 2200 words out of what I'd prepared, period. I'd always had an aversion to planning too much out and that turned out to be a huge problem (more on that later).
I didn't want to give up mid november though. I was already questioning if it was a waste to use my vacation days for nano. It certainly would be if I didn't even bother writing. But I was out of steam on the first attempt, so I felt I had to start over. Not that throwing away two day's writing was a huge loss or anything.
The second attempt was much better. I actually did a bit of outlining. I also worked something more familiar: generic fantasy. I was hesitant to do fantasy when I started, and I spent quite a bit of time whether or not to use it. I was really afraid the story would read like a Dungeons and Dragons adventure because that's the sort of thing I'm used to writing/plotting/GMing. By mid november though, I wanted something I was sure I could do. I'm pretty good at spawning all sorts of new plot threads in this sort of adventure and I had a lot more confidence for that too, so I rolled with it.
I like my second attempt at a story. I didn't rush into it and actually spent a couple days just planning in. I picked through some characters that had existed in my head, put them together, and waited for plot to strike. This took up a few more days, but I think it was worth it. I ended up doing just under 10,000 words in roughly a week. If I kept up that rate for all of november (assuming I'd had the free time from the start), I would have won nano. I guess you could call it nano lite or something. Also, I plan on continuing writing it, and if I can have it done by dec 21 (since I started nov 21) I'll consider it a personal victory on some level.
First off, I learned a great deal of respect for those of you that have succeeded at nano. And even more that have done it multiple years, knowing what you're getting into. It's great when you have the enthusiasm, but a lot of it is work. I spent more time convincing myself to write than actually writing.
On to the actual writing, I think I finally figured out why outlines are great. I used to oppose them pretty heavily, but I'd never done any writing so substantial before. I liked the spontaneity that came through when you didn't know where a story was going. I thought I'd be bored writing to an outline where all the plot twists were already decided.
What I found was that while major points were plotted out, there was still room for plenty of creativity inside the outline. Writers are inherently creative people. Of course they're going to find something new along the way between bullet points. In past attempts at writing I'd found that I was too terse. I'd say what I was gonna say and be done with it. I keep things efficient and don't repeat them. Not much paraphrasing either. Brevity is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. But this meant that hitting nano's word count was hard and details were sparse. When I had an outline already set up, I found myself taking more time to make up all those little details that I'd previously omitted. It was like I had to make up a certain amount of random, unplanned shit in each chapter, so the more I had planned ahead of time, the more detail I discovered as I wrote. This kept it feeling spontaneous and creative even though I had a guideline.
The other advantage of the outline was that it gave me something to look forward to. I knew which chapters were going to be fun. I think I ended up with 7 or 8 chapters on my whiteboard. They each had 2-4 sentences of plot. Seeing the good one two chapters ahead of me helped motivate me to get through the chapters I wasn't so fond of.
Long story short, even though I didn't win, I developed quite a bit as a writer (mostly with regard to how I see outlines), had some fun, and have a story in progress that I intend to continue past november.
I feel like I had some other commentary but it's slipped my mind for now, so I'll just end with "goodnight."
I think I failed for a number of reasons. But the reason I'm choosing to blame most is my job. I hit my word count on the first day and then servers died and I found myself working late for most of the first week of the month. As I mentioned in the previous post I was taking the last to weeks of the month off so I'd have time to nano, so I didn't think that working late was that big of a problem. In terms of free time it wasn't so bad, I just had to work twice as hard when I had time allotted. Work interfered again as I worked overtime making sure things would be ready for me to take off for a couple weeks. I'll likely have to make up for work not done while I was out. (I'd like to mention that in the 11 days I've been off I've not received emails or phone calls from my boss on 2 or 3 of those.)
Anyway, this post is supposed to be about nano, so I'll stop talking about my job. Let's just say that it killed the first two weeks of november. Aside from Nov 1, I found time to write one other time during the first two weeks. I think I managed 2,200 or so words then. That's sad for two days of work, let alone two weeks. While I did in fact have enough time left after that, it was crazy demoralizing. It killed all the enthusiasm and momentum I'd built up.
There were other problems too. I rediscovered my addiction for Angband. I kinda forgot I'd have to go to thanksgiving, so that ate a few days. Oh and I got really into season 2 of Lost, which definitely slowed me down. Finally, kalliejenn2 distracted me quite a bit too, but I'm certainly not complaining about that ;) .
The big problem though was that I was unprepared. My story could be explained in a paragraph and there really wasn't much more going on. It wasn't even a very interesting paragraph. I'd hoped to just make up fun dialog. Time restrictions or not I was lucky to get 2200 words out of what I'd prepared, period. I'd always had an aversion to planning too much out and that turned out to be a huge problem (more on that later).
I didn't want to give up mid november though. I was already questioning if it was a waste to use my vacation days for nano. It certainly would be if I didn't even bother writing. But I was out of steam on the first attempt, so I felt I had to start over. Not that throwing away two day's writing was a huge loss or anything.
The second attempt was much better. I actually did a bit of outlining. I also worked something more familiar: generic fantasy. I was hesitant to do fantasy when I started, and I spent quite a bit of time whether or not to use it. I was really afraid the story would read like a Dungeons and Dragons adventure because that's the sort of thing I'm used to writing/plotting/GMing. By mid november though, I wanted something I was sure I could do. I'm pretty good at spawning all sorts of new plot threads in this sort of adventure and I had a lot more confidence for that too, so I rolled with it.
I like my second attempt at a story. I didn't rush into it and actually spent a couple days just planning in. I picked through some characters that had existed in my head, put them together, and waited for plot to strike. This took up a few more days, but I think it was worth it. I ended up doing just under 10,000 words in roughly a week. If I kept up that rate for all of november (assuming I'd had the free time from the start), I would have won nano. I guess you could call it nano lite or something. Also, I plan on continuing writing it, and if I can have it done by dec 21 (since I started nov 21) I'll consider it a personal victory on some level.
First off, I learned a great deal of respect for those of you that have succeeded at nano. And even more that have done it multiple years, knowing what you're getting into. It's great when you have the enthusiasm, but a lot of it is work. I spent more time convincing myself to write than actually writing.
On to the actual writing, I think I finally figured out why outlines are great. I used to oppose them pretty heavily, but I'd never done any writing so substantial before. I liked the spontaneity that came through when you didn't know where a story was going. I thought I'd be bored writing to an outline where all the plot twists were already decided.
What I found was that while major points were plotted out, there was still room for plenty of creativity inside the outline. Writers are inherently creative people. Of course they're going to find something new along the way between bullet points. In past attempts at writing I'd found that I was too terse. I'd say what I was gonna say and be done with it. I keep things efficient and don't repeat them. Not much paraphrasing either. Brevity is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. But this meant that hitting nano's word count was hard and details were sparse. When I had an outline already set up, I found myself taking more time to make up all those little details that I'd previously omitted. It was like I had to make up a certain amount of random, unplanned shit in each chapter, so the more I had planned ahead of time, the more detail I discovered as I wrote. This kept it feeling spontaneous and creative even though I had a guideline.
The other advantage of the outline was that it gave me something to look forward to. I knew which chapters were going to be fun. I think I ended up with 7 or 8 chapters on my whiteboard. They each had 2-4 sentences of plot. Seeing the good one two chapters ahead of me helped motivate me to get through the chapters I wasn't so fond of.
Long story short, even though I didn't win, I developed quite a bit as a writer (mostly with regard to how I see outlines), had some fun, and have a story in progress that I intend to continue past november.
I feel like I had some other commentary but it's slipped my mind for now, so I'll just end with "goodnight."