If you’re not sure what NaNoWriMo is, I explain it in this post.
This year’s National Novel Writing Month has been a refreshing experience for me. Outside of blogging I haven’t spent large chunks of time dedicated to creative writing for a few months, other than university.
Regardless of word count, the discipline of writing everyday and spending time on a creative project has been worthwhile and motivating.
In saying this, I have managed to reach the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month. While the word document is over 50,000 words and I have technically ‘won’ NaNoWriMo, my novel is far from complete. I’d say 5,000 words are notes on scenes I haven’t written yet or character notes, and 10,000 words are paragraphs or lines that haven’t been designated a chapter. But I did write all these things this month, so it totally counts.
Despite ‘winning’ already, I’m going to use the last six days of November to tidy up the word document and make it a more coherent story rather than a lot of notes and random sentences. I’m not exactly looking forward to this process, but I know that when I start it’ll get easier, and when the novel flows I’ll be happy and proud of the work put in.
In the least, I have an outline, which means I know what every chapter will involve, and most chapters have got at least a paragraph written. Even though I like the thought of writing beginning to end, with no mess (I don’t think ‘no mess’ is an option, though), some chapters are easier to write than others, which means I’m going to skip around until I find the chapter that flows at the time. And as I go, I get ideas for other chapters, or I make notes for the sake of continuity or character growth. If something happens in one chapter, I’ll hop to another and make a note so the details are correct throughout the whole story.
With all this mind, I should get cracking! Happy Sunday 😊
Sarah xx
the softest words 
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