NaNoWriMo Recap

Posted 05 Dec 2017 drafting editing science fiction

• Complete a new draft of Love & Pickpockets, goal of 7,500 words – Check! Completed 11/4 at 8,013 words
• Complete a new draft of The Bantam, goal of 18,000 word – Check! Completed 11/14 at 19,326 words
• Complete new drafts of serialized short stories for Patreon supporters (5 @ ~2K words ea) – Check!
  • Ep 1 Finished on 11/18 at 2,780 words
  • Ep 2 Finished on 11/21 at 1,251 words
  • Reached 10,293 on 11/25 with 7 full or partial episodes
• Complete a new draft of The Keeper, goal of 7,500 words  - Did not begin
• Complete a new draft of A Path in the Sand, goal of 13,000 words - Did not begin
• Complete a new draft of Bad Apple, goal of 20,000 words - Did not begin
• Estimated word count goal: 50,000 – Nope. 37,632.
• Have tons of write-ins for all the WriMos in my region – Check! Not as many as last year because the libraries declined participation and some of the writing workshops moved away, but we still had five events with great turn out!

• Despite a strong start, I ended up far behind once I started working on the Patreon episodes, and suffered some serious resistance after I finished them. I wasn't happy with how they turned out, and had a mental block moving forward when I found I'd left a lot of prep work unfinished on the other projects I wanted to work on.
• I ended with 37,632 words

• Last year we had house guests to start out the month and I was happy to get my work done anyway. This year the house guest came at the end of the month and I was overconfident in my ability to work with a guest in the house. I was not prepared for that guest to be as early to rise as I am! Especially considering she is from the west coast and my alarm is set for 2 am equivalent in her time.
• I had trouble getting my mind in order to even begin NaNoWriMo this year. I was still trying to decide what I would work on mid-way through October, and didn't begin outlines until the last week. I was also still working on my Salvage revision up until October 31. Last year, I already had an outline at the end of September and felt well guided through the plot of my story. I think breaking up NaNoWriMo between multiple projects required more preparation, but I gave it less if I'm being honest.
• I hit a wall when I went to start my eighth project (following the Patreon episodes) and discovered I'd left a huge gap in my plot prep. I was reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in preparation to write that one, and left the story's third act to design after I had informed myself from the classic. Unfortunately I did not remember this when I did finish Shelley's book, and was extremely daunted by the blank spots in my outline. Combine this with the resistance I was feeling by that point in the month, after struggling to rewrite the Patreon episodes, and I really did my own head in.
• Knowing the struggle I had to re-draft the Patreon episodes, I was afraid to then move on to another project in the list. Both of those had existing text I planned to draw from, and I felt gun-shy to attempt re-drafting again.

• Not that I didn't already know it, but I am not a pantser. I could probably train myself to write by the seat of my pants and explore a story that way, but the habits I've established are such that I feel far more confident in writing when I have already decided where I'm going, at least broadly.
• Knowing I had company coming, I could have spent more lunch hours writing, but early in the month I was overconfident and used my lunch breaks to run errands and just get out of the office.
• I need to plan to write entirely new drafts. Having words that already exist make it hard for me to let loose and write with abandon.

• Hubris. I was surprised by how over-confident I was, especially going into the month with so little prep work completed.

• On Dec 1, I revised Love & Pickpockets and sent it to Parvus for their review and comments.
• I'm half-way through a revision of The Bantam. Hope to finish that today (between my lunch break and an evening session).
• My goal is to finish both the Patreon content and my current revision of Salvage by the end of the year. To that aim, I am scheduling my time for each. Mondays and Tuesdays I will spend on the new content from November, and the rest of the week I will be working through the remaining 80K or so of Salvage.
• Have a coaching session for The Bantam and look at the direction of its following episodes with my editor (aiming for next week).