By the end of the first post in this series, I was high on enthusiasm for writing a novel that I'm truly passionate about. This second instalment is about my first big bump in the road towards that goal.
After years of wanting to take part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I had finally found myself in possession of the perfect combo: plenty of free time in November and an idea for a story that I was actually excited to write.
With a good amount of planning under my belt, the time was ripe to dive in and begin my novel writing journey. But it was my first NaNoWriMo, and I was not prepared for the challenge that lay before me.
NaNoWriMo
A quick refresher for anyone unfamiliar: NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge in which aspiring authors all over the world attempt to stop procrastinating and get on with writing that novel.
The goal is to write 50,000 words in November, which averages out to 1666 words per day. Even in a month where you have a lot of free time, that is a huge commitment, so it's no surprise that I didn't manage it. Having come out the other side of this intense month, I'm amazed anyone ever completes the challenge at all.
I came in at just under 23,000 words, a figure that would have disappointed pre-November Sam. If you'd told me back then that I wouldn't even manage half the word count, I might have sacked the whole thing off. Writing a novel is difficult enough without the prospect of missing your very first deadline by failing to reach an arbitrary word count.
However, lots of people fail NaNoWriMo. And I'm far from the first person to write a blog post about the positives I've taken from failing this gruelling challenge. But the whole point of failure is to learn, and there are lessons that I'll take with me as I continue writing. So here's what failing NaNoWriMo did for me as a writer...
Quantity Before Quality
Though I hate to admit it to myself, I'm a huge perfectionist. I find it hard to call something complete until I know it's as good as I can make it. While this makes me a good critic for my own work, it can really slow me down when it comes to creative projects. And it's definitely not compatible with a time-bound challenge like NaNoWriMo.
It's not that I can't write to a deadline. But it's one thing to come close to a submission date by editing a short story as I write; quite another thing to pore over every phrase of an entire novel. If I was going to come close to 50,000 words, I had to change tack. I had to force myself to do what lecturers and online articles had been imploring me to do for years - I had to grit my teeth and move on even if I wasn't 100% satisfied with what I'd written.
Though it was painful at first to abandon sentences that I felt needed more work, I wouldn't have made the progress I did make without it. But there was another benefit to this approach that I hadn't expected: leaving edits until later has actually improved the quality of my editing.
My preference for editing on the go stems from an aversion to the idea of multiple drafts - why would I completely rewrite something when I could edit what I'm already writing? But it's funny just how much more clarity I feel when giving myself a few days or weeks between writing and editing. Though this might sound like a no-brainer, it's a new discovery for me and I'm going to stick to it.
Living the Literature
While the shift from "edit as you go" to "just keep writing" was a pretty significant one for me, the biggest change in mindset was actually to do with time management.
As I've mentioned on this blog before, I like to structure my creative time. This helps me to make space in my schedule to further my projects, but sometimes I'm just shooting myself in the foot. I don't like sitting down to work on something unless I know I have a big chunk of time to do so.
Once again, NaNoWriMo put paid to my way of thinking. You don't write 50,000 words in a month by restricting your time - you need to have the world of your novel constantly in mind. Waiting 5 minutes at the tram stop? Note down what will happen to your protagonist next. Waiting for a jacket potato to bake? See if you can finish that difficult chapter.
If that sounds unhealthy, I don't mean it to. Of course I allowed myself to switch off when needed. But relegating creativity to long, uninterrupted sessions isn't always helpful. What NaNoWriMo taught me was to be ready for inspiration all the time, and always be ready to make progress when possible. Lots of my best ideas come outside of my writing sessions, and committing them to paper sooner rather than later has definitely paid off in recent months.
A Kick Up the Backside
Even in the optimistic days of early November, there was a small voice in the back of my head that told me I would never hit 50,000 words. What kept me going during the doubt was that, regardless of my total at the end, I would have a significant chunk of my novel written. A chunk that I had previously refrained from getting down onto the page.
It sounds obvious, but once December arrived, it felt so cool to have a big long document full of... my book! Concepts and characters that had lived for so long in my head were now real and telling the story that will eventually become my novel. Though I hadn't even reached half of NaNoWriMo's word count, the feeling of reading through the first chapters of my story was enough to make this technical failure feel like a roaring success.
I always knew writing a novel would be a huge task, but it's only now that I'm facing the enormity of the legwork involved. Even at points where I know what's going to happen, each word still has to be chosen and added to the seemingly endless ocean of sentences.
That's even before considering the huge time commitment needed to write a novel. My free time fluctuates a lot, so it's difficult to build the momentum that was so easy to come by in November.
My journey through the novel-writing woods is far from over. But NaNoWriMo gave me the space and motivation to step into this forest, and has given me the skills I need to stick to the path even when times are hard.
My authorship journey continues, and progress is slow but steady. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.
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