Home Stretch and Lessons Learned

I'd like to be able say I'm going to hit the magical 50K that is the ultimate goal of NaNoWriMo. I'd like to be able say that the novel I am writing makes sense.

Neither of them would be true.

However, that doesn't mean the month is a wash. I still have all the words I've written and the beginnings to a story. I started NaNo (my first I might add) with the attitude of "if I write 50K that will be awesome, but I don't expect to". This freed me up to not stress about the whole thing and just enjoy the moment.

NaNoWriMo is 30 days and nights of literary abandon. 50K is the goal, but that doesn't mean you have to stress about it.

While most people were:

OMG! WHAT AM I GOING TO WRITE! I'LL NEVER FINISH IN TIME! THE WORLD WILL END AND THEY WILL ALL LAUGH AT ME!

I was:

Relax...it's all good.

Currently, I am at 25K. That means I would have to write 5K a day to hit 50K by Friday. Yeah. I could theoretically still make it. However, I'm not going to push myself. For one, I didn't do enough pre-planning. I don't even have a skeleton of an outline done and I barely know how a scene is going to end. I'm just writing.

So, lessons learned:

1. I need to pre-plan some for next year. This year, it snuck up on me and I was completely unprepared. I need to choose one of my existing ideas and start some basic outlining/character design. That way, I'm not spending half the month trying to figure out what my characters look like much less how they would act. I figure I have a year. I'm not going to stress.
2. Time manage better. This is a result of not being prepared for NaNo. Instead of writing, I goofed off too much. Breaks are important, but not to the extent that I did them.
3. I could, with the right preparation, write 50K in a month. If you look at my stats, I wasn't too far off there for a while, then I got bogged down and stumbled.
4. I might have to choose something goofy to do next year. I generally write very serious things, so it might be fun to try something different. After all, that is what NaNo is about. Stretching your imagination beyond where you thought it would be.

So, as we say about my local football team, there is always next year. :D

#writemotivation got overshadowed by NaNo this month. I'm guessing that happens. NaNo has a tendency to overshadow everything. However, I do believe I made my goals (despite being very amorphous).

1. Survive NaNo. Yup.
2. Work on HJ. No, but I wasn't expecting to be able to. I just had it here in case I was up to it. I wasn't.
3. Blog once a week. Technically "yes". However, last weeks blog was VERY late and was part of a Blog Tour. I did not do my weekly #writemotivation post. I was too tired.
4. Cheer on my #writemotivation tweeps. YUP! I didn't get as much in as I usually do, but there was some dino zombie cheeleader cookie slinging going on.

So, there you have it. Once November is done, I'm setting aside Troubleshooter so I can finish Hate Jacket.

'Till next time.