7 Takeaways from My First NaNoWriMo

If you’re in writing circles or have friends who are, odds are you’ve heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the annual challenge in which participants attempt to write a 50K word novel in the 30 days of November. This was my first year attempting the challenge, so I thought I’d share a few things that I gained from the experience!

1. I Can Write Much Faster Than I Do

To put things into perspective, I have a YA fantasy novel that I’ve been working on for over a year, and it’s sitting at around 40K words. And here I went starting a brand-new project and getting over 50K words down in only 30 days!

This showed me a few things: I have more time for writing than I thought, and I can push myself to write faster and more often than I do. There were a lot of days during NaNo when I “wasn’t feeling it”, but if I sat down and started writing, I’d find I could easily get out 1200-1800 words without too much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Actually, most days of NaNo I found myself thinking “Hey, this isn’t so bad”. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t have to choose writing over other (sometimes more-enjoyable) things some days in order to make it work. But the challenge wasn’t nearly as painful as I’d expected.

I’m thinking about setting an easier goal for January—maybe 1000 words per day, which should nicely finish up my YA fantasy WIP—and seeing how it goes.

2. Sprints are Magic

Speaking of writing faster, during NaNo I discovered the magic of the word sprint. Somehow setting a timer for 10, 15, or 20 minutes and writing at full bore just works, and without sprints I don’t think I would have made it to 50K!

I think the reason they work is that they’re somewhat similar to the Pomodoro Technique, where you set a timer and focus on something for 25 minutes, then take a 5+ minute break. Telling your brain “Okay, we need to focus for X minutes” is much easier to stick to then saying “We need to punch out 1667 words right now”.

My regional NaNo group also had a fun version of a sprint that they used at write-ins. We’d all roll three (many-sided) dice to get a number of words we needed to write before we could speak again. I think the highest number one could roll was 888, and there was at least one of these sprints where all of us needed to reach 600+ words! This is very productive both because you need to write a lot of words and because no one is allowed to talk (and distract each other from writing). 🙂

3. Writing Can Be a Social Experience

It wasn’t until this year that I joined a local writing group and found the #WritingCommunity on Twitter. Both those things helped me start to see that sharing and critiquing writing could be a fun, social experience. Before this year, I was kind of a hermit-writer, who toiled away in secret, secluded from other writers except for brief updates to Wattpad.

NaNo was different. Back in October, I replied to a tweet asking if anyone wanted to be part of a group message to support each other while doing NaNoWriMo. I’m so glad I did! The ladies of that group chat were so supportive. I learned a lot from them, especially since this was my first NaNo and I didn’t know what to expect, and I loved how we cheered each other on. Maybe the most inspiring part was seeing how much they all had going on in their busy lives while juggling their daily word count (I had it easy in comparison).

Then there were the regional NaNo events. I’d never been to a write-in before, but I attended several throughout the month and even hosted one at my house. My favorite was a Progressive Write-In, where we worked our way across our city by writing at four different locations throughout the day and topping it off with a celebratory dinner. That was also my best-ever word count day, when I did almost 6400 words! The writers in the group were so much fun and it was amazing to meet other people who were also excited about this somewhat-crazy challenge. 🙂

4. Research is a Double-Edged Sword

I had a very interesting relationship with research while writing my NaNo project. My novel takes place in Africa, where I’ve never traveled. (I plan to correct that in 2021, but until then, here we are!) A lot of research was required, but spending hours doing research when you could be getting words down is not really conducive to winning NaNoWriMo.

As a result, two things happened. The first was I learned how much I really love the research aspect of writing, and missed it when I had to push myself to keep going. Learning and exploring new things is always enjoyable to me, and some of my most fun writing time in November was spent reading the whole Wikipedia page on chameleons, digging up Ancient Egyptian insults, and learning about the origins of writing and the undeciphered language of the Meroitic script.

The other thing that happened was that I had to skip over a lot of setting descriptions until I could do more research. I just couldn’t take the time to do the needed research while still writing, on average, 1667 words per day. As a result, I have a lot of blanks I’ll need to fill in later, and I’m a little worried about how much time that will take. One particularly lacking sentence I remember goes something like:

The stone table was laden with [color and color] [African flower] blooms.

Yikes. 🙂 So at least part of the reason I can’t normally crank out 50K words in a month is because that doesn’t allow enough time for research.

5. Writing Every Day is Unnecessary

One of my original intentions for NaNoWriMo was to write everyday. You don’t have to scroll too far through #WritingCommunity tweets before you’ll find someone spouting the wisdom that a real writer writes everyday. While it’s true that in order to make progress on a novel, you’ll need to be committing time to it and writing often, it’s completely unnecessary to write everyday.

Just look at me—I skipped three days of writing during NaNo and still managed to make it to 50K words. Those days coincided with Thanksgiving, my niece’s birthday party, and one busy day when I just really couldn’t handle writing. If you can’t write everyday, that’s okay! You’re still a writer, and you can still win NaNo. 🙂

6. If Something’s Not Working, Change It Up

I learned all kinds of hacks and tricks from fellow NaNo participants, most of which boil down to: if something’s not working, change it! There were a few days I sat down at the computer to write and just couldn’t do any more screens (since I’m in front of them all day at my dayjob). No problem! I’d just hand-write my words for that day, sometimes in the bathtub for minimal distractions and maximum luxury. The Progressive Write-In my regional NaNo group hosted was my best day, which just shows how helpful a new environment can be.

Changing up fonts can have a big impact too. While drafting, I used Google Docs’ default sans serif font (Arial), but when that scene/chapter was “done”, I’d change the font to Garamond. This helped me to not go back and edit, which was key in being able to finish NaNo and keep the word count going up instead of down. A writer from my Twitter group message tried switching her font to a large Comic Sans and, despite her dislike of the font, found it was a great way to pump out words.

Another writer friend from Twitter found herself pretty far behind on the last day of NaNo, and unfortunately had to travel that day. She thought outside the box and was able to make her word count by using voice-to-text on her phone! I know that next time I sit down to write and the words just aren’t coming, I’ll have a lot more tricks up my sleeve before I throw in the towel.

7. You Don’t Need to “Win” NaNo for It to Be Worthwhile!

I did manage to “win” NaNoWriMo, which is defined as writing 50K words by midnight on November 30, but honestly? That part didn’t matter. I didn’t really “gain” anything by finishing: my novel isn’t done (I still have about 15K words to go just to finish the very rough first draft), and I would’ve still learned all these other things about writing and myself whether I stopped at 25K words or made it to 50K.

Some of my writer friends didn’t make it to 50K, but all of them ended the month with more words down and more progress on their novels than they started with, and that’s the important part!

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I hope you enjoyed reading about what I gained from NaNoWriMo this year! If you’re curious about it, I encourage you to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll quit or not make it, and even then you’ll have more words than you started with. 🙂