Zero to One Column by Chuck Heintzelman

Now that NanoWrimo is over and I sit here with over fifty thousand words of a new novel, it’s time to get analytical.  What did I learn from the experience?

#1 – I discovered I can do it

I had doubts before I started.  November is a busy month.  I had to juggle not only family and work but also a four-days-away-from-home vacation.  But I did it.  I finished.  The feeling of accomplishment on having piled up fifty thousand words in 30 days is both gratifying and surprising.  Yea me!

#2 – Momentum builds

Knowing I’d be away from writing for four days, I set out to write 2,000 words a day.  The first few days were tough because 2,000 words seemed too large.  To make things easier, mentally at least, I broke my daily word count into 500 word chunks.  Setting a timer for 30 minutes, I told myself all I had to do was write 500 words in the next 30 minutes.  On the first day, the pace was a struggle.  I only hit my 30 minute mark once.  On day two, it was a little easier.  By day three, 2,000 words came much quicker and I finished within 90 minutes.  The daily momentum kept moving me forward, making the writing easier and easier.

#3 – To Focus In the Moment

The key, in my case, was to lose myself in the moment.  Sure, I had a simple outline and vaguely knew where I was going (this outline totally changed, but that’s another story).  I found if I focused on my protagonist, in the moment, and kept her moving through time, facing the challenges that confronted her, thinking through her problems, and basically staying alive, that the 500 word chunks went quickly.  Of course, after I veered greatly from my outline I did flounder a bit, but for the most part by staying focused on the task at hand, in the moment, the words add up quickly.

#4 – Let the Character Make Mistakes

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not one of those writers that allow characters to take over and dictate the story to me.  I mean, I’m the writer not them, dammit.  But I did find that my characters wanted to explore areas that I hadn’t accounted for.  Once, my protagonist wanted to delve off into a tangent which I knew would not prove fruitful.  So what?  I let her do some unexpected things and fall flat on her face, resulting in a better story.

#5 – When in doubt, blow something up

Stephen King did this in The Stand.  Who am I to doubt his methods?  So when I hit the 30,000 word mark and had the feeling that my characters were treading water, waiting for the next thing to happen, I threw in a car wreck.  The wreck came out of the character’s action and didn’t come off as a random accident.  It was something I had not planned for, yet it worked out beautifully.

#6 – Not to Stop

After 23 days of writing about 2,000 words per day it was time to go out of town for Thanksgiving.  After eating too much and writing absolutely nothing for four days, I arrived back home with two days to go.  No problem, I thought, two more days of writing 2,000 words per day and I’d reach the end.  It was hard.  Far harder than the first day.  The daily momentum had stopped and now I had to break inertia to get moving again.  The last 4,000 words took as long for me to grind out as the previous 10,000 had.

#7 – It’s okay to write crap

One of the biggest lessons I learned from NanoWrimo, is that it’s okay for my prose to be imperfect.  To get the words out I had to turn off my internal editor (actually I wrapped chains around my internal editor and threw the whole squirming mess into the back of my closet).  I kept telling myself that everything can be fixed later.  Nobody would be seeing this draft except for me.  I learned to allow myself to suck.

~

Overall, the experience was great.  I’m planning on participating in NanoWrimo again next year.

Initially, I had planned to write the “Ten Things I Learned from NanoWrimo.” But my internal editor has broke free of the chains and escaped my closet.  It (for some reason my internal editor is androgynous) has convinced me that seven items learned is enough for this column.  Now it’s time to go start editing my Nano project.