You never know what you can accomplish until you challenge yourself. When I started NaNoWriMo on November 1, I had no idea whether I could write 1667 words of fiction in one day, much less keep it up every day until I completed 50,000 words. To my surprise, not only did I succeed, but I actually finished a couple of days early, because I wrote more than the minimum word count on most days.

During the challenge, I learned a lot about the process of writing so many words in such a short time. Here are a couple of my tips in case any of you decide to try NaNo next year:

1. It really helps to have a road map. When you are running a marathon, you don’t have time to stop and plot your course during the race. Before I started NaNoWriMo, John and I had created an outline for each of the upcoming chapters of our new book. As it turned out, the outline was not detailed enough. During NaNo, we were constantly discussing what would happen next. Based on our discussions, I would sketch out a more detailed outline for each upcoming chapter on our dry-erase board before I sat down to write it. (I was fortunate to have John’s help. If I was trying it on my own, I would have been lost.)
2. Understand that it will require discipline. At the beginning of NaNo, you have the momentum of excitement and fresh ideas. After about the second week, the excitement wore off for me and it became real work. I knew I had to keep up with the word count each day– if I fell behind, I doubted that I would ever catch up. There were many days when producing those 1667 words was an act of willpower, not inspiration.
3. Don’t edit your work during the challenge. The organizers of NaNo discourage you from rewriting until after the challenge is over. They are very wise in saying that. On two separate days of the challenge, I broke that rule and went back to revise what I had written the day before. By the time I had finished the rewrite (which changed my total word count), I was already tired of writing, but then I still had to add enough new words to get the manuscript back on track for the 50,000-mark. It felt like twice as much work as an average writing day.

Am I glad that I participated in the NaNoWriMo challenge? Absolutely. It taught me a lot about my writing capability, and gave me a tremendous sense of accomplishment. It also sped up the time for completion of our next novel. Although adding 50,000 words was not sufficient to finish the manuscript, John and I are only about four chapters from the end. If all goes well, we may have it ready for publication by March 16, 2022 (which will be exactly two years after we published our first book 60th Hour).

Will I try NaNoWri Mo again next year? Ask me in six months — at the moment, I am still recovering from the last one. 😉 Going back to writing 500 words a day, four days a week, seems like a vacation. However, now that I know how much I am capable of writing in a single day, I am considering increasing my typical daily word count to 1000 words a day, four days a week. We shall see.

In the meantime, the real question for me (now that NaNo is over) is whether I should start revising the chapters I wrote during NaNo or finish the rest of the manuscript first. Knowing me, I’ll probably end up doing a little of both.

If you participated in NaNo, feel free to leave a comment about your experiences. I’d love to hear from you.

-Susan 12/3/2021