Of course I have to talk about NaNo here–it’s only a few days away!

If you’re not familiar, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you write a novel in a month–specifically, you take a completely new story idea, possibly one you’ve outlined or planned out but usually not one where you’ve written any prose yet, and you write 1,667 words every day in November and end up with a 50,000 word novel. The fun part is that lots of writers across the world try this at the same time, so it’s a great time to meet other writers in your area or online.

But not everyone sticks to the official goal. Some people write multiple short stories instead of a novel, some people choose to count outlines or blog posts or other writing-adjacent material as words written toward their goal, some people come up with their own goals entirely, all kinds of things. They’re known as “NaNo rebels.”

I’m planning to be a rebel this year, and here’s why.

Timing with current projects

The main issue is, I’m in full-on book climax territory with Melody’s story (roughly 80% through, early 3rd act, whatever you like to call it), which is a terribly awkward time to drop her and work on something totally new. It’d drive me nuts all November, and then be hard to pick back up later.

Also, one of my beta readers has a bet with herself that I’ll finish by the time week 2 of NaNo is over. She’s planning to buy herself cake if she’s right, and I can’t in good conscience let myself be the reason cake didn’t happen. xD

Speed

The other issue is… I just don’t write at NaNo speed ^^;

I could probably generate 1.6k of something every day, but perhaps not something I’m happy with. If my writer brain is doing well, I can reliably produce about 800-1200 words of story every time I sit down to write. Sometimes more–sometimes lots more!–but not always. If I get too concerned with word count and try to keep writing after I’m tapped out, I can end up pushing the story in the wrong direction, and then I get stuck for real.

I know that sounds low, especially when you consider the self-published writers who seem to effortlessly knock out three or four thousand words in one sitting, but to me the actual story progress feels fast. (Part of that is that I tend to under-describe in first drafts, and description takes a lot of words.)

Workflow

I’m also a sparse outliner. I don’t typically have a planning phase. MMPC started as a rough synopsis in the notes app on my phone at 4am (no joke), and apart from little notes I’ve punched into my phone or brief outlines of the chapter I’m immediately about to write next, I’ve never made a more detailed plan. The extra time I need in between every thousand words or so is partly to figure out what happens next.

The biggest outline I’ve ever written was for an urban fantasy novel I still haven’t finished, which is on the back burner because I suspect I’m not skilled enough yet to pull it off. The outline is ten thousand words long and details each scene, and honestly I need to redo it if/when I get back to that novel because a lot of those scenes need to be cut.

That book got that kind of outline out of necessity. It’s an alternate Earth setting with tons of weird worldbuilding, an ensemble cast with nine major characters who all have arcs, multiple viewpoints, multiple Tragic Backstories ™, two separate mini-heists, and a major mystery arc, plus the darn thing is paced like a thriller so every scene needs to do triple duty because it has to be concise.

I probably did more mid-draft editing on that book than any writer should do in their entire career, lol. There’s a reason I moved on to other projects. There’s a reason I moved on to much shorter projects.

(In fact, this is the novel I should take into NaNo–one that holds up to extensive planning, and needs to be pushed through rather than fussed over. But not this year. This year Melody and Kai get my attention.)

Alternate goals

Not everyone works like I do, I’m not one of the NaNo haters who think that writing a story that fast will inevitably produce something unsalvageably terrible. It really works for some writers. And I still think it’s fun to participate! I’m just not trying for the set goal, because it doesn’t work for me this year.

I’ll still be pushing myself to write every day, or close to every day, and try to get as much done as I can. If I get about 1k/day on average, I’ll be pleased with that!

The idea is to see how much I can finish, not to run myself and my story into the ground to meet a deadline. No deadline means no reason to procrastinate (“well I don’t need it done until…”), no guilt, and no mad dash at the last minute. Don’t get me wrong, I am good at the mad dash–it’s just not good for me… so I’ll hold off on that kind of performance, at least until I’m getting paid for it 😉

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Are you planning anything for NaNo? Have you won before? Is this the first you’ve heard of it? Tell me in the comments ^^

Wordfully yours,

–Jade