Blogocentric Formulations

NaNoWriMo... done!

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BOOM. There it is. This year's NaNoWriMo is officially over (at least for me, in terms of my writing), and I can proudly raise my glass and say that I finished it this year. After a dismal showing last year, I've redeemed myself in 2010 and increased my track record to two successful finishes in three attempts.

This was a tough year for me. New job, the "NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon"  which is bigger than ever this year, and quite a few other obligations both on this site and in my life offline. I freely admit that I hated my story and the last half was pretty much an exercise is perseverance (or stubbornness), where I was just trying to finish for the sake of being finished. I wasn't really ever invested in my story, which is probably why a mystery-esque drama for the first 25,000 spent the last half of the word count including fantasy, science fiction, erotica (lots of erotica! ), action sequences, ninjas, supernatural phenomena, and travel.

What did I learn from NaNoWriMo this year? I learned that I can't do it again without a plan in place. This is the third straight year I've gone into the competition without any prep work. The first year (2008), I signed up at the last minute and just started writing. Last year, I had an idea, but no plan, and ran out of steam. This year, I had an idea, but also no plan, and it was a struggle to finish. More than anything, I'm realizing that there's no upside to NaNo if you don't have a plan going in. If you're winging it, it really is a pointless exercise, and other than the satisfaction of saying that you finished the challenge, there's not a lot you have to show for your efforts. Except a rough draft of a story that you're not really interested in... and let's be honest... 50,000 words is a hell of a lot of words to waste on something you're not passionate about. Right?

So that's my promise to myself. Regardless of what else I have going on in my life, if I can't find the time to put together a decent outline for a story and characters that interest me, I'm not going to participate in future NaNoWriMos. It's just too exhausting, and too much work to put into something that I know is going to be buried in the darkest recesses of my hard drive and never see the light of day again. I love NaNoWriMo and I would love to compete every year... but I need to respect myself and my time enough to know that I'm not just throwing it away on a trivial exercise. If I'm going to write 50,000 words, I want it to count toward something... not just be a one-off story that I know I'll never seriously consider reworking.

So there it is. Three past NaNoWriMos, two successful, all with stories chosen and written off the cuff. It's been a great three years, filled with fun, frenzy, and furiously flying fingers on a keyboard... but now it's time to take NaNoWriMo (and my writing efforts) a little more seriously. No more sudden ninja attacks, or sporadic, marathon lovemaking sessions just to bolster the 'ol word count.

Congratulations to everyone who's finished NaNo, or is still attempting to cross the finish line. You all have my most profound respect; it's not easy, and I hope that your novels are coming out the way you hoped they would.