what i learnt from nanowrimo 2015

First of all, I got out of NaNoWriMo alive! I marked my 50,000 words three days before NaNoWriMo ended. I’ve got my certificate, my badge and the t-shirt, too! (see below)

Most importantly, I learnt a few things about myself during last November. Here they are:

I can do this. Well, this was my first time. I have never attempted to write 50,000 words before. I have never attempted to write anything this long before. It was important for me to prove myself that I can do this and that’s what I did.

Deadlines are working for me. Before NaNoWriMo I had two deadlines for two totally different projects. One of them was so personal and so difficult to write because of it. I literally sat down at my computer and bled. Ernest Hemingway would have been proud of me. But I finished them anyway. So deadlines are working for me. They just didn’t seem that way when I was at school, though.

You can grow a writing muscle, literally. I actually did grow a writing muscle during November; my right arm is visibly larger than my left arm now. Also, my RSI can be very expressive sometimes but this time around, even my index finger got plumper.

My inner critique can be silenced. I never thought I would say this but I actually managed to silence my inner critique during NaNoWriMo and felt comfortable about it, too. I mean I didn’t feel comfortable about feeling comfortable but you know what I mean. Let’s face it; what I wrote —at this stage— is a piece of shit but that’s the reason why we call it “shitty first draft,” right? And I’m feeling comfortable about writing utter shit? That is a miracle!

I’m an outliner with a pantser streak in me. I took this course sometime ago on Udemy called How to Plan and Outline Novels (Using Scrivener), taught by Sean Platt. So, before NaNoWriMo, I prepared my scenes according to what I learnt from the course, fleshed them out even further and even developed a few main characters. I just didn’t have enough time to do it all the way through the story, though. So, I left a sizable gap there, floating about totally directionless. Talk about plot holes. I knew that once I stepped into that unknown area of the story, I’d dry out like a menopausal women and that’s exactly what happened. However, when I arrived at the unknown area of the story, I was happily pantsing.

I thought NaNoWriMo was going to kill me. Instead, I really enjoyed my experience. Intense writing gave me such pleasure which was so unexpected. I felt alive and I would LOVE to do it in 2016, too!