I did it. I wrote a total of 50.009 words over the span of 30 days! Out of those 30 days, there were only 2 days where I did not hit the daily goal of 1667 words. That’s how strict this challenge felt. Once I missed the goal once I was pretty much going to have to keep up until the final day. And I did so. Here are a few of my thoughts looking back.
Quality: The quality of what I wrote, looking back on it, is better than I expected. I was worried that a week into this challenge I would start writing stuff just to fill the word count. And that did happen in a day or two. There’s two or three chapters along the road that I will probably completely scrap. But overall I think the story itself is solid. And I was able to think up a lot of things for the story that I hadn’t planned for. I’ll be editing things down and hope to show some progress next year. I have plans, but I’m learning not to promise things I won’t follow up on.
Quantity: 50.000 words is a lot. That’s almost 1/5th of my total word count for 2021, and half of what I wrote in 2020. I don’t believe I could keep up this pace for more than one or two months, at least not yet. I have too much going on in my life. Having said that, it’s very nice to take a month and just focus on writing.
Other things I’ve learned: This one feels kind of unfortunate. When it came to school work, I was most efficient in the morning, because I wanted it to get over with. This has gotten me into the mindset that I focus best in the morning. Throughout this challenge I learned that most days I wrote in the evening. When it’s around 9 or 10 pm, and I’ve already resigned to taking a break that day, I end up sitting down and writing an entire chapter in one sitting. I hope to explore this a bit more and find out when to write from now on. I’d rather have had it be the morning though.
Final thoughts and looking forward: This was a fun challenge, I’ll probably try it again next year. I initially had another story planned for this year’s NaNoWriMo, one that I’ve been thinking about for years, but it wasn’t in a good enough space. I did get some good ideas for that story while writing this one, so I’m probably going to write that out over time and use it for next year’s challenge. I want to turn this story I have right now into a novel. I’ve always liked Light Novels from Japan. I’m of two minds about them, actually. One one hand I have these huge fantasy tomes and they’re great, but sometimes your mental health is in a rough state and just picking up a book is a challenge. Having a shorter, 50-70k word book nearby is great, because it feels a lot more manageable. And once you’re reading, you can scale it up again. WIth the story more or less done and the final chapter on paper, I think editing will add maybe another 10.000 words for small chapters I should go back and include, which I think is a nice amount.
And that’s really it. I’m going to work today and tomorrow, because my boss’s solution to work getting busier isn’t to properly hire more employees or pay their current employees more. It’s just to have us work longer hours and deal with it. Who knew it gets dark in the winter and being able to see is vital when it comes to handling letters. I’m not bitter, you are 🙂
Thanks for being so patient with me over the last month, you can expect more regular posts next week!
Opal Kaharis 