No No Write More....

NaNoWriMo2017 Blog Day 10.

So I'm doing NaNoWriMo . An online community challenge to write 50000 words in the month of November.

I've been doing fine so far, averaging close to 2000 words but having highs and lows. Pretty easy to see the patterns so here it is, one-third of the way into my first NanNoWriMo, my first NanoWriMo lessons learnt so far.

I planned hard. Finished October with a detailed set of numbered plot point descriptions. That has made it great, I copy a plot point into a new document and start wiritng it. This has made NaNoWriMo feel like a colouring in exercise, mostly. Sometimes I need to veer of the planned points, I've added new characters, characters have gone and done things I didn't expect them too, planned plot points sometimes just suck.... Every time this happens the whole process slows to grind. If I don't sacrifice some typing time to sort the plot points back out my productivity takes a huge dive.

I do triple back-ups. One copy of each file on my work PC, one at home on the laptop and one on Google Drive. This works really well, mostly. I woke this morning to the realisation that I had overwritten my up-to-date files on Google Drive with out of date files and had lost about 1000 words of progress on it and the laptop. This crushing blow ended my morning's creative urge (squandering a 5am wake-up). I felt a lot better when I got to work and found correct files in my work PC's “downloads” folder but the blow was still a blow.

I tried doing some of the organised NaNoWirMo WordSprints on Twitter. Quite revelatory. I'm still looking at where my characters ended up e where to go next but the brutal focus on speed seems to have really helped me find a more 'personable' writer's voice and sent a couple of characters in directions I probably would have thought my way out of. The whole first draft will probably wind up in the bin, but I'm definitely learning some interesting lessons.

Socially NaNo has been a bit of a big step for me, but I'm still hiding behind a screen. I'm aware that I'm getting to the point I could really do with some writing buddies, hopefully intereating with the NaNoWrMo community will make help with that process.

Anyway, I've just written almost 400 words that don't count for my NaNoWriMo total and it feels great,

Thanks for reading, or not reading, but then you probably aren't reading this bit either,

Bert

#amwriting #nanorwrimo