Impressions of a First-Time NaNoWriMo-er

Cheating a bit here. I wrote this the day after NaNoWriMo ended last year, Dec. 2, 2007. I hadn't quite gotten out of the habit of writing everyday yet (but it didn't take much longer) and I figured I might as well capture my first impressions while they were still fresh. As another November approaches, it's worth reminding myself what it was like that first time...


When I first heard of NaNoWriMo, I thought to myself that it was a crazy goal I’d never be able to achieve. “That’s for people who are more experienced/talented/serious in writing than I am,” I said to myself. “Maybe one day, I’ll be able to take on that challenge.” I wish I could remember exactly when that first thought first popped into my head, but I think it was about July or August of 2007.

I should have known better than to apply ‘Maybe one day’ to a challenge like this appearing in my life. You see, I have these obsessive, stubborn tendencies. Sometimes, it’s a fleeting concept in my day where I suddenly remember than I haven’t had any Filipino food in quite a while only I don’t know any good places nearby to get Filipino food. And so I’m off to the wonders of technology that is Google and the next thing you know, I’m going slightly out of my way on the way home so I can have take out for dinner. Sometimes it lasts several weeks or months when I get hold of a new video game so that I have to come home every day and play the latest Final Fantasy installment so that I can find out what happens in the story. So if I get an idea in my head, no matter how nonchalant I pretend I can be about it, I’ll still fixate enough so that the only cure is to actually do something about it.

And that’s not even engaging my competitive nature. I’ve tried to scale back on the urgency of my response to the idea of competition - I’ve actually used that tendency for evil, to the detriment of personal relationships and my happiness in the past and I’ve learned to be leery of its power. But as soon as my inner competitor whispered, “I bet you can’t do it.”, my knee jerk reaction was “Oh yeah? Watch me!”

All I needed was someone I knew who had done it to tell me it’s not as bad and scary as it appeared to be. That came in the form of a friend in my writing group who, without my prompting, announced that she had just completed her own novel writing month in August ahead of the official November event. And that it wasn’t that bad. So I did what any rational, obsessive, competitive planner would do: I researched the project, bought the No Plot, No Problem book and researched what tools and resources I would need to have in place in order to succeed at it. I decided that I would need a laptop despite previously decrying their use for ergonomic reasons so that I would be able to transport myself and my creativity to various points of inspiration and interest aside from my home office. Once I gave myself permission to do research, I went on to research Mac laptops (which I’ve never previously owned) because they seemed to be more creative than the PC desktops I’ve owned in the past. I didn’t have the wherewithal to justify buying a brand new top of the line Mac laptop so off I went to Ebay, which I’ve never used, so I could get a better deal and still have an out. That if I didn’t actually do NaNoWriMo, I didn’t spend full price so it would be okay. Of course I still had to support my physical health so I had to research accessories that would enable me to move around with a laptop without killing my wrists and hands as I wrote my 1667 words a day for an entire month. And I did this all before October so that I would have time to teach myself how to use a Mac and the new novel-writing software (also researched) so it wouldn’t slow me down.

Yet in October, I was still telling people that I was only considering NaNoWriMo, but not really committed to it. Even as I tried to convince other friends with writing tendencies, I still sidled up to the idea, stating only that I was considering doing it. I finally gave up pretending on October 5th when I signed up on the official NaNoWriMo.org website and joined the community of largely younger and very enthusiastic writers from all around the world waiting for the commencement of November. I was and still am enamored of the concept that community can provide powerful momentum to accomplish more than the individual, even with such a typically solitary endeavor as writing. And as I found out more about the organization and founder that started NaNoWriMo, I was inspired by the example of one man starting a movement and event that essentially encouraged, challenged and supported anyone who had ever dreamed and wanted to follow that dream. And what an extra bonus that the birth of NaNoWriMo happened just down the road from my house! I took that to mean that I should go ahead and go for it.

As instructed by the No Plot, No Problem book, I wasn’t supposed to start with a plot or work too extensively on my novel until a week prior to November 1st. Have I mentioned yet that I have a planner mindset? I think I managed to last until a week and a half before November. I had a pair of characters, a general conflict and sat down to write 59 phrases that was my plot outline. I vowed to set my daily goal to 2000 words, rounding up the 1667 so that I would have a buffer if I had some bad writing days.

I almost didn’t go to the pre-November kickoff party in San Francisco. But it was there that I made some key writing buddy friends that I would see through the month of November at write-ins or through NaNoMails, who kept me going. I also took the opportunity to thank Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo’s founder for creating and living such an inspiring vision. I’m sure he hears it every day, but I wanted to add my voice to the numerous others whose lives he has touched and made for the better.

To borrow from the NaNoWriMo Forums, Things I Learned from NaNoWrimo in November:

- I’m goal oriented. Actually, it’s not so much that I didn’t know I was goal oriented. It was that I had to negotiate my goals with myself ahead of time. For example, I gave myself 2000 words per day. On the first weekend, I hit 2000 and stopped even though I still had time during the day to get ahead of the schedule. The following weekend, I made sure to give myself notice that I would do double word count days on weekends so I could keep going.

- I can keep writing what happens next in the story even if I don’t actually know what happens next. This started kicking in about mid-way through the story when I started deviating significantly from my outline and I thought I would have to take a break and restructure the rest of the outline. Turns out, I still wrote 2000 words during those days. My goal-reaching fu is stronger than my path-finding fu.

- Fingerless gloves help keep my typing longer because my hands are nice and toasty. If they’re pirate fingerless gloves, my hands can go ’arrr!’ at the keyboard and intimidate the keys into submission.

- I will never win a word war in IM chats, but in four 15 minute wars with appropriate breaks, I can make my daily word count. Also, I can do self word wars, but it’s only slightly less effective because my in between breaks tend to go longer than the IM chat rooms.

- Figuring out plots and characters is a lot like puzzle solving, only I’m the one making the pieces and seeing where they fit. This is trickier than it sounds and is also a lot of fun.

- I like writing dialogue more than I like writing descriptions of people, places and things.

- I often wonder how little justice I’m doing to the dramatic scenes in my story when I’m writing for quantity.

- I don’t snack or drink nearly as much as I expected while writing.

- Singing along with my iPod is a great mini-writing break activity. This works better when I’m not out writing in public.

- 50,000 words is a stronger goal than finishing the story. My momentum went down as soon as I hit 50k even though I’d already negotiated with myself that I wanted to finish the actual story in November.

- I’m afraid of writing endings. This may be because I don’t want stories to end but if I attach a goal to it, I’ll probably end up doing it anyway.

- My inner editor likes to tell me how cliche my plot ideas, word choices, character quirks are. It’s liberating to write anyway, and let them yammer away in the corner. It does help that I let it correct spelling mistakes as I wrote. Kept ‘em happy.

- I need to put more dysfunctional traits in my characters. Otherwise, they’re boring.

- Backup my work. Back it up redundantly. Assigning my obsessive trait to the job of watching over the backing up process is good delegation.

It’s now December 2nd and I’m wandering around trying to find something to do, which is what led me to write this piece to begin with. I suppose with one of my favorite holidays coming up, I should get into the spirit. But before I let go, I’ve started making a list of changes I want to put into the editing when I pick up this year’s story again. And I already have something in mind for next year’s novel.
PS: I just noticed that I didn’t make minimum daily 1667 word count with this piece and that should be okay. Right? (1666, argh!)