NaNoWriMo - Update!

The month is up!  How did you do?  I’ve gotta brag that I made it although I don’t have a finished novel (in order to succeed you technically only need 50k words which, unless you’re writing a novella or a middle grade book, is probably closer to halfway or two thirds of the way to a completed manuscript).  But hey, 50k words in one month!  And, I don’t think they’re all terrible.  I think I’ll definitely try to keep it up and take advantage of the upcoming holiday off time to finish a first draft of this thing.  I mean, I did just dedicated most of my spare time this last month to it, I really should finish it.

I'm a typing machine!

So yeah, I’m glad I tried this NaNoWriMo thing.  It was fun and it forced me to just write and not think about the consequences.  I don't know about you but I know I can personally get super perfectionistic and discouraged by my writing sometimes.  I’ll want to tweak stuff forever or not even start a project if I don’t think what I’m doing is going to be perfect the moment I put words on paper (which it never is!).  But when my expectations were just about getting words down or fleshing out my outline, I found it easier to plug ahead and be proud of the words I racked up and not look back or over think what I was writing (at least not too too much).

All in all, if I have the time I think I’ll definitely do this again next year.  And hey, it feels pretty good to be halfway to the first draft of a novel I've wanted to write (and after only one month).  Even if I eventually end up hating the whole thing and even if it just winds up in my junk pile, at least NaNoWriMo got me off my butt to write it in the first place.