So, I did NaNoWriMo.
The title, “So, I did NaNoWriMo,” on a off-white background with blue blobs on the top left and bottom right corners along with a pink outline blob overlapping.
So, I did NaNoWriMo and reached the 50,000 word count goal.
But first, what is NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo stems from a creative writing challenge called National Novel Writing Month that started in 1999. The challenge is to write 50,000 words of a novel between November 1st to November 30th. Since 2006, NaNoWriMo is a nonprofit organization that hosts programs and challenges for writers. I wanted to do this last year but couldn’t commit to it so I made it a 2023 goal to do NaNoWriMo.
I actually had a completely different idea for a novel that I wanted to write. It was an idea I had last year. The problem is that I was overwhelmed and was only just slowly getting myself back on track in my life. I also had to consider that I have a full-time job that was going into a busy season so overtime was likely to happen. The combination of everything I was expecting to happen in November the original idea was making it look like I was not going to do it again.
Then inspiration stuck. It was a random idea and daydream that I thought would be fun to explore in writing. This happened a week before November 1st so I went in with very little preparation and a rough idea of the plot with the key points to hit. A rough idea of my characters and their relationship with each other. For me, it was just a fun project with no expectations. The only major step I took was planning how I could manage my word count over the month knowing that I have a job. So below is my word count goal for each day of the month.
November 1 - 1000 words
November 2 - 1000 words
November 3 - 1000 words
November 4 - 3000 words
November 5 - 3000 words
November 6 - 1000 words
November 7 - 1000 words
November 8 - 1000 words
November 9 - 1000 words
November 10 - 1000 words
November 11 - 4000 words
November 12 - 3000 words
November 13 - 1000 words
November 14 - 1000 words
November 15 - 1000 words
November 16 - 1000 words
November 17 - 1000 words
November 18 - 4000 words
November 19 - 3000 words
November 20 - 1000 words
November 21 - 1000 words
November 22 - 1000 words
November 23 - 1000 words
November 24 - 1000 words
November 25 - 4000 words
November 26 - 4000 words
November 27 - 1000 words
November 28 - 1000 words
November 29 - 1000 words
November 30 - 1000 words
I accounted for the fact that I was going to have days that I would not be able to write at all even when I crave out time in my day to commit to writing. I knew I could usually write more than 1000 words so I just put the 1000 words so I knew how ahead or behind I was. I also did not do it on the NaNoWriMo website. I knew their badges and word count tracker would be unmotivating and discouraging for me so I wanted to keep it as simple as possible to reach my goal. So, how much did I actually write?
November 1 - 1194 words
November 2 - 0 words
November 3 - 1648 words
November 4 - 2135 words
November 5 - 4180 words
November 6 - 1221 words
November 7 - 1327 words
November 8 - 1196 words
November 9 - 993 words
November 10 - 2219 words
November 11 - 0 words
November 12 - 5032 words
November 13 - 1779 words
November 14 - 637 words
November 15 - 1069 words
November 16 - 2091 words
November 17 - 0 words
November 18 - 5225 words
November 19 - 1979 words
November 20 - 0 words
November 21 - 1130 words
November 22 - 1006 words
November 23 - 1770 words
November 24 - 0 words
November 25 - 1281 words
November 26 - 5241 words
November 27 - 2850 words
November 28 - 1523 words
November 29 - 1698 words - Reach Goal!
November 30 - 0 words
My actual total is 50,424 words. So I went over 424 words to finish the version I had in my head from start to finish. I was so happy to reach the goal I set out for myself. I was a little worried I wasn’t going to reach it in the end as the last four days would be quite busy for me. However, I quickly learned that I looked forward to writing since I was excited to see what the characters were going to do next to reach the key milestones of my story. It was a nice task to go to after work or between overtime or going back to work in the evening.
I did have zero words days. These usually happened because I had so many appointments for many different reasons throughout the month that took time out of my day. Another reason was avoiding burnout on days that I was already doing so much work for my job. No matter what, I got excited to get back into the story, even in the chapters that I knew were going to be difficult to write.
I will be honest, it is a bad novel. But, it is a great first draft and that is the point. I need to work on my descriptions and I learned more about my characters so that I could explore more scenes that would make key points of the story a little stronger. I do not know what I will do next with it. It was a random idea that came to me and made it a fun experience for me to explore and write. Maybe I will continue exploring or maybe it is a fun challenge that builds my discipline back again in my personal life.
My original intention with this challenge once I moved forward with this random idea was to rebuild trust with myself to commit to something I ask myself to do. I went into a slump in the past few months because doing tasks outside of external obligations was difficult. Whenever I told myself to do simple tasks, I could not move myself forward to do them. Doing NaNoWriMo showed me that I just needed something fun, with no strings attached to take back my wasted time. I believe I did just that and I am proud of myself.
Amanda