NaNoWriMo 2008 is - for all practical purposes - over, and I reached the goal: Write at least fifty thousand words by the end of November.

Back in September, when I first considered signing up for NaNoWriMo, I was really not sure whether I should. So was the effort worth it? Let’s review.

What went right

• I was able to stick to the schedule. I wrote the required average of 1667 words per day, every day, and exceeded it on almost all days. Consequently, I reached the target ahead of schedule. I proved that I can produce text, that I can force myself to write even when I really, really do not feel like it.
• I was able to shut off the “inner critic”. I did this by telling myself that editing comes later, and it worked. I edited the text a few times, once to remove a mistake I had made, and I back-tracked several times to add more text to support things I wrote about later in the story. I did not delete text, I did not get bogged down in permanent editing mode.
• I liked my basic premise and characters. While quality was not a goal of NaNoWriMo, and I will not claim that what I wrote is worth reading, I certainly enjoyed working out the problems my characters faced.
• I built the world. I created a map and various support material for the story. The map, especially, proved to be invaluable; without it I would never have noticed a show-stopped problem with my plot resolution.
• I had fun. Well, sort of - it got harder the further I progressed. But, yes, over all, it was fun.

What went wrong

• I did not outline enough. I had a rough plan and ideas for the novel, and a fairly detailed outline for the first third or so. Based on my experience I will say that complete, proper outlining is absolutely essential for smooth writing.
• I wrote too late at night. Sometimes this was by necessity, other times because I got distracted by other things. On some days I wrote until I literally fell asleep at the keyboard. Bad idea, don’t try this one kids.
• I did not complete the novel. I was not able to complete the novel to “The End” so far, and while I am determined to finish it, it is highly unlikely that I will manage this in November.

Lessons learned

• Build characters and the world. Have a sound design for your characters and world, including the overarching conflict, the themes, thematic subjects, premises, and so on. Without conflict, you have no story. Without interesting characters, nobody will care. Without a consistent world, things will fall apart and you will run into contradictions.
• Outline. Outline, outline, outline. “Just do it.” Writing a complete outline from start to finish needs to be done before you start on your first draft. The outline is not set in stone, but it needs to deal with all main questions, and, most importantly, bring the story to a resolution.
• Write consistently. The temptation to take time off must be resisted. I know from previous experience that, if I set something aside for n days, I will almost certainly set it aside for n+1 days. Ad infinitum. Distractions, such as competing hobbies, should be put aside until after the daily writing session - consider it a reward for hard work.
• I need sugar to work. This is an unfortunate discovery: I need sugar in some form, for example soda, or I will not be productive at all. I am not sure if anybody can relate to this, but when I had no sugar I was unable to write, or at least wrote very, very slowly. With enough “fuel”, I was able to write much faster. Part of this may be that the sugar offset my tiredness, but I am fairly convinced that this is also at least in part a body chemistry thing.
• I have more respect for professional writers than ever. I always knew writing was hard work, but I now know first hand!

So I learned a lot, and had some fun - the experience was totally worth it!

Will I do NaNoWriMo again, say, next year? I honestly can’t say - I rarely can plan a year ahead. I think it would be interesting to see how following the lessons from this year might change the experience. We’ll have to wait and see.

What did you guys learn from NaNoWriMo? Did I miss any lessons, what is the most important thing you take with you after NaNoWriMo? Will you go for it in ‘09? And… “Was it good for you?”

Word count: 45012 (+2128 from day 17). (However, see below for a problem with this!)

Uneventful evening. Made the 45k milestone. There’s pretty much no way I will conclude the story by 50,000. Wrote a lot of dialog / exposition today. Now that they have the necessary information, my protagonists will soon set out on their quest to save the world™.

Wordcount as of 2008-11-18

I did note that I work better when I have a certain minimum intake of sugars. Which is really not cool, but it is something I should keep in min for the future.

In more general NaNoWriMo news (ha, I thought I’d never include that again!), they brought their word count tool online for testing. Interestingly enough, it counts only 43678 words when I paste my work into it - 1334 words less than what OpenOffice counts. I am not too concerned over this (although it is good to know now rather than on the 30th…).

It was reported to be a bug with OpenOffice. I verified it, and indeed found the issue already filed at OpenOffice.org. That’s quite annoying, but since I used the “broken” word count, I’ll probably continue to do so as there is no way I can correct the counts of the previous days. Since NaNoWriMo verifies to the correct count anyway, I’ll just have to make sure to have a good many words more than I need. Considering how much I still need to write that should hardly be a problem.

If any of you do use OpenOffice you should definitely check if this problem affects you.

Word count: 42884 (+2338 from day 16).

Today’s writing session was much smoother again. The word count is still fairly low - I only wrote 2338 words - but at least I did not sit in front of the OpenOffice file torturing my brain for hours. Incidentally, my average is 2522.6 words per day.

My protagonists are out of harm’s way for now. They are about to receive a lot of information on what really happened; that will be tomorrow’s contribution to the novel, and will probably be one of the easiest sections to write.

Wordcount as of 2008-11-17

I am getting very close to 50,000 now. I can almost smell victory…

No real insights or “in other news” today. Sorry :-)

Word count: 40546 (+1783 from day 15).

Another day of low output.

Wordcount as of 2008-11-16

I did not feel productive during the day at all, and spent way too much time procrastinating. It became much easier to write after I took a walk (in the rain, no less) in the evening, but I became very drowsy while I was writing. I vaguely remember going to bed…

I finished the scene I was working on this morning and reached a convenient break point. In total, it was only 1783. However, I did reach the 40,000 words milestone, and will definitely reward myself for that today.

Plot-wise, things are progressing in a fairly straight forward manner. I think I will have to change one aspect of what I wrote, however. We will see. My two main protagonists should find the main objective today or tomorrow (day 17 or 18, that is) and then it’s resolution time. As there are still several things I need to work out before “The End” I am absolutely sure 50,000 words will not suffice. As a rough guess, I will say 65,000. It will be interesting to see how accurate this prediction is.

Word count: 38763 (+1938 from day 14).

And so we reach the half-way point of NaNoWriMo. I made it to 38763 words today (yesterday, technically, as I am posting this on Sunday morning). Progress was slower than I had hoped. I am really feeling the chore of writing now. Words flow less easily. I have to pay more attention to steering towards the conclusion, and this limits my freedom. Instead of “this would be a fun obstacle to write about”, I find myself compelled to make sure than anything I add will get my protagonists closer to their goal. It does not mean they are having a free ride, of course. In fact when I left them today, they were in a life-threatening situation.

Wordcount as of 2008-11-15

As you can see, I slowed down a lot the past two days. This is a direct result from the lessened enthusiasm and fun. I still made the minimum quota on both days, and with over two weeks remaining I am still confident that I will make the 50k goal.

These past two days have re-affirmed my respect for writers. I was never part of the crowd who thinks writer have an easy life, but to actually be forced to write something on schedule, whether you like to or not, is a new experience for me.

Now I will take a break and reward myself with breakfast, before I tackle today’s writing session. I ended on a cliffhanger, so hopefully I will have more fun writing the narrow escape than I did getting my characters into the situation in the first place.

Word count: 36825 (+1667 from day 13).

My buddy Pedro made level 58 on World of Warcraft today, and so I ended up playing in the Outlands with him for quite a while. Yes, it was a lot of fun, but it also ate away too much time from writing.

Not that I really felt like writing today. I was tired and felt terribly ill, with headaches and the works.

As a consequence, I almost did not write, but I managed to do it. I only made the minimum word count, but that would be OK even if I was not way ahead of schedule. It does mess up my nice graph a little, but it would be silly to get upset about that.

I again went back to an earlier point and added some things in that I needed. It further shows that a decent outline would have saved me a lot of trouble, and did I mention that the whole thing will need an urgent rewrite / editing process - in December?

I am off to bed now, and hope that tomorrow will be more productive again.

Word count: 35158 (+3250 from day 12).

My two main protagonists are now on their way to finally tackling the main objective of the novel. And I do not mean that in a meta novel plot type sense; they are actually on their way to the location. The group of shelter survivors shattered today, as the character I do not like basically took control of it. What can I say, he is a jerk and an egomaniac.

I really did not want to write today. I had to force myself to do it. It was very awkward at first. Then I went back and expanded a scene much earlier by a short bit, and this laid the groundwork for a conflict I wanted to include today. After I had done that, those 3250 words came fairly quickly. Listening to good music helped too: I have several hours of DJ Risc’s now defunct Eve Radio show recorded. It’s really good music to listen to while working, in my opinion - not too aggressive, but energetic enough to keep you going, if that is the right term.

With 35000 (thirty five thousand!) words written in less than two weeks, I am starting to feel a little proud of myself. Sure, this ain’t gonna be a best-seller, and had I not promised at least one person that he could read it, I’d probably hide it forever. But it’s going to get done, and it’s going to get done in November, unless an Act of God prevents it.

But honestly… I don’t think it is so bad that I must be smitten with lightning.

Wordcount for 2008-11-13

Fairly smooth progression, eh?

Word count: 31908 (+3088 from day 11).

Woke up at 4am today, after I had gone to bed early, and so I did what any responsible NaNoWriMo participant would do… I began to write. Or so I tried. I failed miserably. I was stuck! I did not know how to proceed. I spent some time planning the future progress of the novel, and tortured my poor head all day. I finally began to actually write in the evening, and once I had gotten past 500 words, the rest of today’s output followed quite easily.

I am at a fairly convenient breaking point, so I decided to stop for today. I have a few more things I want to settle, before I approach the “grand finale”, so to speak. That is, where the protagonists tackle the main objective of the novel. I know I will hate the novel as I write it, and I know I will put a lot of garbage in it, but that’s okay. It will get done, it will have the two magic words on the last line: “The End.”

And then, in December, I will read it again, try hard not to throw up, and fix it.

In more general news, I think I have an idea for a fun project to follow NaNoWriMo up with. I’ll have to mull it over a little more, but I’ll post about it in due time.

Word count: 28820 (+2835 from day 10).

I added that other scene I was talking about yesterday. It probably needs some work… but that’s for later. It added 1300 words to the story. I then continued to write the novel. My protagonists are now getting confronted with the main object of the novel. Naturally, there are more obstacles in their way, but from this point on things should develop towards a resolution instead of getting more confusing.

I was tempted, for a little while, to attempt to reach 30,000 today, but in the end I was too tired to do so. As I said before, I shouldn’t force myself just to try and get a higher word count and then risk burn-out.

I am now past the point where I even worry about criticizing myself anymore. I have accepted, no, even embraced the idea that it’s OK to write crap, that is is more important to progress and “get it done”, because you can always rewrite and edit later. (It’s just important not to forget that, yes, rewrites and edits must be done as well. It’s a matter of prioritizing and scheduling.)

No “in general news” today, because I found nothing NaNoWriMo related worth sharing. I did however discover that it’s trivial to export graphs from OpenOffice, so here’s my word count as a graph:

Word count as of 2008-11-11

Word count: 25985 (+2721 from day 9).

I made the 25k milestone. I am half-way to “winning” NaNoWriMo 2008, with twenty days to go.

Writing was hard again today. Not so much because the words wouldn’t flow, but because I think I need “something else”. That is, I think the part I am writing on now should be preceded by another scene. Now, that is not a catastrophe, really. Inserting something can only be good, as it means more words, deleting is what’s not allowed. However, it makes me spend a lot of time thinking about it. I know roughly what is needed, I just need to mull it over a little.

I also created another CD cover for a band I mention in the novel. There’s no real point to doing that, but remember that I am, at heart, a world-builder, and building up a wealth of detail for my world is something I enjoy doing.

I didn’t notice this when I added myself to the science fiction word count chart, but they have nicely formatted statistics for each participant. Here’s mine.

The daily word counts do not match mine because NaNoWriMo seems to cut over to the next day at midnight Pacific time, while I cut over at the end of my day, that is, when I post my daily NaNoWriMo update.

Word count: 23264 (+3460 from day 8).

I am stopping early today - as I write this post, it is just 6pm. I guess I could easily make it to 25k today, but I am at a convenient point to stop. I didn’t quite get to the action part, but I laid the foundation for it.

I easily made the 20,000 words milestone, but I only had 196 words to go, so it doesn’t feel like quite the accomplishment for today. Still, the half-way point is just around the corner, with two thirds of the month to go. This is a Good Thing™.

23264 words in nine days comes to 2584 words per day, on average. Considering I was worried about making 1667, I am quite (positively) surprised with myself. Not that it is always easy. Not that it is good. But it is being written.

As a side note, I checked today: The longest continuous work I have ever written in my life is 54600 words long (and it is unfinished). That’s longer than I had thought! The text on 2nd place is 33000 words long. Therefore my NaNoWriMo novel should, just out of principle, be at least 55000 words long.

And actually have an ending.

Word count: 19804 (+2156 from day 7).

I stopped writing at another convenient break-point. Crazed DJ Molly and our protagonists have joined up, and they are on their way back to the fall-out shelter. Tomorrow - both in terms of writing schedule and in the story world - the real action should begin. I am also “so close” to the 20k words mark - and that’s almost the half-way point. I am very confident that I will meet the 50,000 words, but I also want to “get it done” in November. At the current pace, that may be much harder to accomplish!

In more general news, I added myself to the science fiction wordcount chart. There’s no real point to that beyond being part of some list. As with all things, competition never hurts… I just don’t think it motivates me enough to try and outdo the guy above me.

Word count: 17648 (+2121 from day 6).

Today was not a good day for me, as I was tired and didn’t feel like writing, at all. I still managed to exceed the daily quota; I am a little proud of that: I stuck to the plan even when it was not easy to do so. Not that my output today was overly compelling, but again correcting it is what December will be for.

I did realize that at least some gas masks actually have a very large transparent area, so my removal of facial expressions from a section of the novel was a little hasty. I made a note of it, and will change the relevant section again during editing.

In more general NaNoWriMo news, I saw that some people wrote over 200k words in a few days. Let me spell that out: Two hundred thousand words. Now that just seems excessive, and I truly wonder how much filler material there’s in those novels.

Word count: 15527 (+2509 from day 5).

I’ve reached the 15000 “milestone”, and ended today’s writing session when I reached a good point for a break. I probably could have written a little more, but again, why hurry and burn myself out?

I have begun to increase the weirdness level a little, but my protagonists have not really met any opposition. Two of them did have their first serious argument, however. Tomorrow I’ll revisit the crazed DJ, Molly, and introduce her to my protagonists.

I am now at the end of my detailed outline, and am beginning to improvise. I still know where I am going, with some intermediate steps and also where and how the novel should end, but there’s a lot of blanks in between. No real matter, I know I can improvise, but writing with an outline to guide you is of course easier. That’s what I get for switching my plan a few days before NaNoWriMo, and also for being bad about outlining.

We live to learn.

Word count: 13018 (+1678 from day 4).

I made today’s quota, and I could continue, but I will probably call it a day. If I do write more, it’ll be in tomorrow’s count.

I did have to edit yesterday’s additions. I stupidly forgot that everybody was wearing gas masks, and had put references to facial expressions etc into the story. At least I caught it. I know I am not “supposed” to edit during November, but I thought that this was big enough a problem to warrant immediate correction.

Besides that, I butchered some nursery rhymes today. Want a sample? I warn you, it is bad.

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.

Your city is on fire,

your children have all burned,

except for little Molly,

who is very jolly,

and as far she can tell,

in her own personal hell.”

I did warn you, so stop grimacing.

Molly is a character that arose from a need in the story; I hadn’t pre-planned her. I had fun writing her part into the story, so she was a good addition. She will return in a few days, when I finally hook her up with my protagonists.

PS: NaNoWriMo’s website is still way too slow.