NaNoWriMo Final Report

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

This is the first year I’ve tried NaNoWriMo. In   October I came up with an idea for a new suspense  novel, a stand-alone featuring a character with some problems I wanted to explore. Over the coming days various scenes and aspects of the story came to mind, so I jotted these down and soon had a list of moments in a scene, or a number of scenes. Enthusiastic now, I wrote a short synopsis. With this in hand, I figured I could stay focused on just moving forward with the story rather than going back and rewriting and adding, etc. NaNoWriMo seemed to arrive at just the right time.

 

I ended the month with 40,508 words. After taking most Sundays off and an occasional Saturday, I averaged 1,558 words a session. The low daily count was 825 words on November 1, and the high was 2,296 on November 16. If it weren’t for NaNoWriMo, I probably would have set my daily word count at 1,500 words, which has been average for me for years. 

 

This month of working on my new novel, tentatively titled “Renee’s Trial,” included time spent on short stories. I worked on the novel in the morning, and on short stories in the afternoon. I don’t get much in the way of a word count after writing the first draft of short fiction. My short stories usually go through a dozen drafts and sometimes end up totally different from what I originally had in mind but the word count changes little. Four stories were published this year, so I don’t mind the slow process.

 

I signed on for the Sisters in Crime FB NaNoWriMo group but never participated in their “write-ins” and other events. It was enough to know they were out there. I checked in to see how my fellow writers were doing, sharing my totals when I could. The program created a definite buzz and energy and I’m sure that helped keep some of us going.

 

Would I do this again? Yes.

 

NaNoWriMo worked for me because I used October to prime myself to focus on something specific rather than a general idea of, Gee, I think I’ll write a novel in November. I knew where I was going and much of the path I wanted to take. Because I wasn’t doing any editing along the way, or at least very little, I was adding words instead of deleting them (an all-too-common practice for me). So, yes, in similar circumstances in the future, I would definitely sign on for NaNoWriMo again.

 

Right now, as I look at my draft and my list of total words per day, I’m estimating that I can finish the first draft before Christmas, and bring it in at 75K words or more. That will be a very good ending to an otherwise miserable year.