Reflections of a NaNoWriMo Newbie

November has come and gone, which means that NaNoWriMo is officially over. I started the beginning of the month with some trepidation and uncertainty, but I finished it - and accomplished writing 50,000 words in a month - calmly and without fanfare.

But I did it! I completed my first NaNo, and it was pretty great. I just thought I'd share some of the things I've learned, and where I'm planning to go from here.

1. Slow and steady wins the race

NaNoWriMo is often associated in my mind with a desperate rush to the finish where you're writing 10,000 words per day to make your goal. I don't know why I thought this would be me, since I'm not a last-minute kind of person. In my five years of university, I never pulled an all-nighter. I just can't do that. Some people need the pressure of the finish line looming to complete things, but I don't. Basically, NaNo was a reminder that I really should be writing at least a little bit every day. On good days, I would write more than necessary and get a little bit ahead so I could relax on the days when I just couldn't squeeze in more than a few minutes of writing time. By the time November 30 rolled around, I only had an easy 500 words to finish off.

2. Writing in community is always better

Having so many people with the same goal as you, cheering each other on, is so valuable. Like I've said before, I've realized over the past few years that writing shouldn't be a solitary thing. It's so much more fun and purposeful if you have people writing alongside you, struggling with the same things, and have an understanding of what you're doing and why you're doing it. I also had people IRL cheering me on (if they slightly misunderstood), and that helped too.


3. Writing consistently is key

Having written in between homework and school stuff for so long, I'd often go for weeks without writing anything, and it's really hard to get back into wherever I was thinking for the story and characters after a few day or week break. It's much easier to keep a pulse on where I want the story to go when I'm immersed in it almost every day.

These are all definitely lessons that I've talked about before, but they're definitely things I need to keep reminding myself. And mostly that I just need to write. I just need to get words on a page, and after that everything comes more easily. It's kind of weird, how I've been writing for years but I feel like I'm only just starting to figure out how to be a writer.

As for what's next... well I now have two drafts of things sitting for a bit until I go back to touch them up and then do the scary part... sending them off to people I trust for edits. In the meantime, though, I've got some ideas for a fantasy story so I think I'm going to take some time to do some world-building this month. Anyone have any world-building tips or tricks? How was your NaNo experience? Do you find NaNo valuable if you do it?

My First Time Doing NaNoWriMo

I am terrified.

That's what NaNoWriMo does: strikes terror into my heart. 50,000 words in a month, the goal of writers everywhere for November's dubbed National Novel Writing Month, is a lot. A LOT.

I've had many different relationships with NaNoWriMo. I've made excuses. I've publicly declared disgust for such an arcane practice so I could more easily get away with not doing it. I've used school, I've used work, I've told myself and others that's it's just too much, it's not for me. (And to be honest, if I was still in school, I would never do NaNo; November is an awful month for students. But that's another discussion.)

I've done less ambitious NaNos before. I've written 30,000 words in a month, twice. I've done Camp NaNoWriMo in summer (highly recommend for students). I've written two drafts in the past two years, more than I ever have, and if I happen to finish this current draft this November, I will have written TWO books in ONE year, which I don't think I've ever done. Ever.

I should be ready for this! Why am I not ready for this?

Maybe it's because I look at the month of November, think, 1,677 words a day.... I can't do this. What if I can't do this? I'm already behind! I'm not one of those writers that can write ten thousand words in one sitting! Sometimes I can't even get out five hundred! 

I can't do this.

But then I yell back at that doubting, panicking voice: it doesn't matter. I'm going to try. Self-doubt has plagued me before and has made me not want to write for years. I have a story I like, characters I like, and a great couple of critique partners currently to back me up. And, hopefully, I have you! If I've learned anything the last few years about the solitary activity of writing, is that it SHOULDN'T be solitary. It should be done in community with other like-minded, passionate individuals, interested in creating stories; with people who understand the ups and downs of this type of creative work. If you want to add me as a writing buddy, I'm asherlockwrites, or tweet me and we'll do sprints together or something!
 
Let's do this thing.

(also if you have any experience with NaNo whatsoever, please give me advice or tips, anything, thank you!!)

Begin Again

You haven't written anything for two years. Well, aside from essays (and you've gotten quite good at those).

You remember a time when you were a girl who scribbled things with careless abandon. She was so happy, so unencumbered. The words poured from her pen, the tips of her fingers, like it didn't hurt her at all. Her identity was deep and rooted, known to herself and everyone else. Now it seems a foggy memory; the girl a distant stranger.

Other things occupy your time. School. Life. Friends. Books. The internet.

You don't spend time staring at a blinking cursor on a blank page on a screen, because you never get there. Instead, the blank pages are in your head, taunting you, reminding you of all you aren't and never were. You pretend to move on. Writing was a childish past time, nothing that could fulfill you later in life. Besides, everyone says writers write, which of course makes you nothing.

You think yourself in circles. You're just stuck; you're busy; you never really were serious about that writing thing; you're really, really, really busy. You'll get back to writing eventually, you tell yourself. You ignore the self-doubt and terror under the surface, that the blank page must stay blank because nothing you fill it with will ever be good enough. You'll never be good enough.

Maybe you'll never write again.

I wish you could see into the future, have the ability to turn around and look back at the whole picture. I wish you could see how you just need to grow up a little bit, to try something new, to learn to let go. I wish you could see the thousands of words you've put to a page, filling up that white space that so filled you with terror (and still does, to be honest, but you fight it). You're not the same scribble-happy little girl, but interpreting the world with words is something that will always be something you end up falling back into. I wish I could tell you that you'll find it again.

But you won't believe me.

*** 

I really, really wish I would have posted more about not being able to write anything during the time when I wasn't able to write anything, even just for those people who suffer long dry spells (including myself). Because I know it's easy with hindsight, when you are writing regularly, to look back and tell people it'll be fine, you'll get back into it eventually once you let go of your stupid perfectionism, learn a few tricks, and stop caring so much. And then suddenly you'll have almost two full-length books written! However, it's not so easy to see how you'll get out of a hole when you're in it.

But I'll say it anyway - you will find joy in writing again. It will probably be different this time; a different routine, on a different theme, more or different people cheering you on. But you will find it.

How do you get out of writing slumps? What advice would you give to someone trying to find joy in writing again?

7 Lies I Believed About Writing

There are a lot of misconceptions and myths that float around about writing, and as a result I wrongly believed a lot of things about writing when I was younger. I was one of those kids who was always writing things and showing off scraps of everything to all my family and friends. When I was a kid, writing was easy and everyone told me I was fantastic so it was easier to believe ALL THE LIES. I have since learned the truth.

me actually writing feat. cat

Lie #1: You only write if you're inspired

I'd never heard the term Muse when I was a kid (and once I did I didn't understand it), but I knew: the way writing works is you are INSPIRED by whatever, usually nature because that's artsy (rain if you want to be even more artsy) and then you would write based on that inspiration.


The Truth: If you wait for the passionate winds of inspiration to sweep you up, you will hardly ever write, and you'll constantly be wondering why Inspiration or the Muse or the Universe or whatever hates you so much.

Lie #2: Only write if you feel like it

When I was younger, I basically only wrote when I felt like it, which happened to be a lot since writing was a fun thing to do with no pressure and I didn't have anything better to do because I was a kid. Since I was able to feel like writing all the time, I thought that was how it worked - you wrote because you felt like it, and if you didn't feel like it that was a sign that you shouldn't write.


The Truth: When I got older and had things like school, work, and more school taking over my life, brain and energy, it turned out that I never felt like writing. As it turns out, you do have to write even when you don't feel like it, because that's the only way you'll get words on a page. (Shoot. I just realized I don't feel like writing right now. I should probably go do some writing...)


Lie #3: Writing is fun

When I was a kid, writing was basically always fun. Writing was a way to be silly, creative, and make use of all the weird things my imagination came up with.


The Truth: Writing is sometimes fun, but more often it's work. It takes sitting your butt in a chair, putting fingers to keyboard, and making some word vomit. And sometimes it's grueling and awful and it sucks, but then it's been an hour and you've got 500 words!

Lie #4: If writing feels like work, you need to stop

Related to believing that writing is always fun, I thought that if writing ever started to feel more like work and less like fun, then I shouldn't be doing it anymore. If I was planning to do this as a career, I needed to love it with an all consuming passion! And something feeling like work means I don't love it!


The Truth: Whether or not you plan to pursue writing as a career, you're never going to love writing all the time. Sometimes, writing is going to suck, and you're going to hate it, but that doesn't mean that you should never write again.


Lie #5: If you don't feel good about a draft, you should probably give up on it

Little Alyssa had no concept of rewrites or constructive criticism. I just write stuff, she thought, and then everyone lavishes praise on me! So it must be good! If I don't like something I wrote, I should just rip it up or hide it deep in a drawer where it can't embarrass me anymore.

The Truth: First drafts suck. That's what they are made for: to suck. But then you actually have something to work with, to shape into something that hopefully resembles whatever amazing piece of art you were imagining in your head, with help from some friends along the way.

Lie #6: You have to wait for inspiration to come to you

The main conflict of your story? How to get from point A to point B? Your characters' motivations for their actions? That will all magically just come to you via the winds of inspiration, because you are a magical writing goddess who summons ideas and solutions to writing problems wherever you go. You'll just be out on a walk, or driving your car, and then it will just hit you and everything will fall into place, like in an episode of Jane the Virgin.


The Truth: Inspiration will sometimes come to you, but more often, you've got to just sit your butt down, and think. Yeah, I know, you've actually got to work on thinking through character motivations, scene transitions, and all that stuff, by asking yourself a million questions and coming up with a whole bunch of bad ideas in between soliciting advice from Twitter followers before landing on a good idea.

Lie #7:  You don't need to write every day

I thought, until recently, that you write when inspiration strikes, or when you feel like it, or when you find yourself on a writers' retreat in the middle of nowhere with no interruptions. Besides, you're strong. You don't need a SCHEDULE to keep yourself in line, you're so much BETTER than that.

The Truth: AGHHH I am still trying to pound this lie out of my head. I have made excuses for way too long for not committing to a regular writing routine, and it's landed me in a lot of trouble (like being in a writing slump for, say, two years). A regular writing routine/schedule is GOOD and NECESSARY and helps you GET THINGS DONE. Also, writing every day (or even just TRYING to write every day) helps a lot with flow, because I don't have to struggle to remember what the heck I was thinking when I was writing a scene three months ago.

What misconceptions have you had about writing? 

I Wrote A Poem Every Day in December!

How it all started:

• a friend of a friend of mine has an Instagram account for her cat, with a twist: every time she posts a picture of her cat, she captions it with a haiku. 
• NaNoWriMo was going on, and while NaNo still kind of scares me, I've gotten closer and closer to doing it, and I liked the idea of writing something every day.
• I've also been thinking about and writing more poetry lately, and I wanted to do more of it.

So I thought, why not try doing a sort of poem diary thing, and write a poem every day in December? I only missed two days, and by the end of December I ended up with 29 poems, which is more poems than I've written since like, 2011.

So, here are some things that I learned while doing this December poem diary project:

1. I have no idea how to actually write poems

I realized while doing this project that while I write poems, I haven't really studied it or read about how to write poems or anything. I don't really know the techniques or the various structures or anything beyond what I learned in middle school. That brings me to my next point...

2. I should read more poetry

Poetry is a weird thing, because it's not something that I've been taught to sit down and read for fun. The most interaction I've had with poetry is in various English classes I've taken, and I really enjoy that but I don't take the time to do it on my own. But poetry can be really powerful, and I really want to read more of it. One of the things that has made me consider buying poetry books (like North End Love Songs by Katherena Vermette) is the enthusiasm of one of the hosts on Literary Disco for poetry. It made me think, oh, people buy and read poetry books for fun? I guess I could do that... I'm always looking for ways to expand my reading tastes!

3. You can be inspired every day if you look for it

There's this idea that floats around that if you wait, inspiration will just come to you. And sometimes it does, but sometimes you have to work for it. Every night I would sit down with my notebook and think, okay, what happened today? What thoughts or feelings did I have today that I want to capture? And then I would try my best to put it into a poem. Once I actually sat down and tried to think of things to write, there was a lot more to write about than I thought.

4. It is a lot harder to think of ideas if you don't go outside

What's that saying? In order to write, you need to live? Well, since I was off school for a lot of December, I spent a lot of time just at home, and it is really hard to think of ideas for a daily poem when you don't do much in the day... so basically, get outside! See the world!

5. Writing helps process things

Last year I had to watch an interview with Miriam Toews for a class, and in that interview she talked about how each of the books she's written have helped her process things in her own life. (Watch that interview, and then read her books Swing Low: A Life, All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness.) I've never really had that experience until this year, with the book I wrote, and this poem diary thing. It is interesting looking back on the poems I wrote this month and seeing how there's a theme woven through it, and how the poems are about struggling with something at the beginning of the month to accepting it and being more content at the end.

Just some things I learned! What have you learned while writing lately?

I Won! (Lessons from a First Draft)

Remember The Deal? Well, I won! I have written 50,000 words of a thing. A very, very messy thing (seriously, the MC has two different ages and two characters have two names), but it's a thing.

How it went down:
Me: Guess what? I won! I finished writing 50,000 words!
My bro: Huh.
Me: Give me a prize!
Bro: *hands over our cat walking over his desk*
 -end scene-

I don't really need a prize though. The last time I finished a draft of anything was in 2014, if my calculations are correct, so I feel fantastic. I think I started this book idea sometime at the beginning of this year, just on a whim, writing out some frustrations, and then it turned into a full length thing because it was the only idea I had. It's also contemporary, which is something I haven't written a lot of yet.

You know, no matter how many blog posts or writing tips I read, I never learn as much about writing as I do when I'm actually WRITING (although I did make use of Chuck Wendig's tips for how to get unstuck once).

my outline

So, some lessons I learned while writing this draft:
1. Not really a lesson, but in the back of my head the whole time I was definitely thinking about an author's advice (I think either Shannon Hale or Kiersten White) about how first drafts are about discovering who your characters are more than anything. That made it a lot easier to have fun writing. :) And I definitely know the characters a lot better now.

2. Writing out of order is great!! It's something I've never done before, but it really helped me to just get words out, just thinking, "What's a fun scene I can write? Okay, I'll write that!" even if it was the end, and I only had 20,000 words at that point.

3. Don't think, JUST WRITE. Literally the answer to everything. Don't care about being perfect, don't care about anything, just get words out. There's no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting, as one of my profs likes to say.

4. Writing is fun. This is something I forgot for a long time, because I was frozen with a desire to be perfect and fear of failure and weighed down with waay too many of my own expectations. When did I forget that it's fun making up characters and getting to know them? It's fun when you write something and just think "all of this is crap!" and then you reread a part and realize, hey, you know what, that's kind of funny. Maybe I can do this thing??

5. This is NOT the end. Not by any stretch. For one thing, I need to fix all of my consistency mistakes (my MC was 16 when I started writing, and I switched her to 18 half way through, and I also switched two characters' names). I also need to put all the scenes in order. But at least I have something to work with now!!

I want to keep talking about this, because it's been soo long since I've been excited about writing and it feels great. I really hope I can keep it up. I'm excited to dig into the second draft soon! Hold me to it!!

What have you learned about writing over the years? How do you stay motivated?