NaNoWriMo and My Epic #Fail

As I wrote here last month, I was going to try my hand at NaNoWriMo in November. It’s a rather sadistic exercise of trying to write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days.

I didn’t make it. Frankly, I didn’t even come close. I logged just under 20,000 words.

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I have excuses, of course. Work. Family commitments. A shocking lack of free time. This past month, those things collided like three drunken outfielders chasing a pop-up and I ended up going two-and-a-half weeks without writing a word.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a few things. Of the three tries I’ve made at this little exercise, I think I got more out of this year than ever.

In no particular order:

Use the time you have instead of waiting for the time you want. When I told myself that I didn’t have time to write, what I was really saying was that I didn’t have an hour-and-a-half block of uninterrupted peace and quiet. Now that we have a son, I may never have that. Again. Ever. Like most things, writing is about commitment. If there are ten minutes to be had, I should be putting my ass in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard and using them.

Deadlines matter. I hate missing deadlines. I hated missing this one, even if there was no real penalty attached, aside from the personal shame of telling people I didn’t finish. Knowing I was working against a date gives NaNo an urgency missing from my other personal writing projects. While I didn’t always get into the chair, I found that, if nothing else, I was thinking about my story and my characters every day. The last week, when the deadline was really looming, I started at about 5,000 words, all of which I’d written before November 7. I ended up averaging about 2,500 words a day to try and make a respectable showing that last week.

Don’t think so much. One of the hardest things for me to get past is this whole notion of Being A Writer and how it Should Be Taken Seriously. With so little time, I thought a lot less about criticisms I’ve heard or the thousands of books out there that are better  than the one I’m working on. Other stuff — construction, description, characterization, plot — those can be addressed later. But nothing happens with a blank page.

Don’t isolate yourself. The NaNoWriMo team does a great job of sending out these pep talks via e-mail. When I was getting really behind in my word count, I stopped reading them. Stopped following the hashtag on Twitter. That was a mistake. Writing is lonely work. Hearing from others, and their triumphs and frustrations, probably would have been a smarter way to go and something I picked back up the last week.

Isolate yourself. When it’s time to write, sit and write. Don’t check Facebook. Don’t read. Don’t look at email. Don’t mess around with the Doctor Fate action figure on your bookshelf.  I found that I can write for about an hour, max, before I need a break. I’d take one – about ten or fifteen minutes – then sit and write a bit more. Or go do something for a couple of hours and come back later.

Be a writer. Not someone who wants to write. Don’t talk about it. Just sit down and do it. My colleague, Sydney, has a great related post on her blog today. Check it out here.

Celebrate more of what you do. At the end of the month, I still had 20,000 words more than I had on November 1. And that’s pretty good. Some of those words, I even like. I’m my own worst critic, but I have to be willing to give myself a pat on the back when I earn it. And even though I didn’t make it, I made some progress. Forward motion is contagious. Doing this, even at the level I did, kick started me back to my personal writing. I’ll take it.

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To those who made it past the finish line: congrats. To those who didn’t, congrats. You have more words than you started the month with.

To both groups: now what?