NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

I'm not sure if anyone reads this blog anymore. But I felt an obligation to wrap up the National Novel Writing Month posts. NaNoWriMo takes place in November; the goal is to write a rough draft of a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. A number of us "alumn" participated. I won't speak for them, but I think we shared similar thoughts about the experience. Here are mine:

-I'd never done anything like this before. I tend to write and edit as I go along. Beneficial in my shorter works; difficult for a longer manuscript. The idea of stream of thought writing, just getting a story down on paper, not worrying if it all ties together quite yet, was an important learning moment for me.

-Doing this confirmed that to write and finish writing projects you have to write - every day. Whether you set a word count goal, time your writing sessions, write three times a day, early in the morning, before bed, whatever - you have to write.

-I made it to 50,000 words...50,003 to be exact (not that I was counting - much!)I haven't even read what I wrote yet. I did share the manuscript with two trusted writer friends to give me feedback. But what I know I have is a story, in its entirety, something raw to work with, not just think about.

-I was amazed at how my plot developed and my characters developed as I wrote without pause. New characters appeared I hadn't thought of before. Back stories became evident as I went along. New twists and turns emerged. I found I wanted to get back to it and write more just to see where it was all going.

Bottom line? As a writer I found the NaNoWriMo experience exhilarating and a learning opportunity. I'm hooked and plan to make participating an annual gift to myself.

I'd welcome any other fellow NaNoWriMo-ers to share their thoughts. Who knows, we may be the only ones reading these posts -- and we already were emailing each other -- but it would be nice to capture here!

Cheers -
Anne