NaNoWriMo 2015: Lessons from failure
I’m not going to reach 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo this year. My hands are in the air and I’m backing away from the manuscript. I reached the 30,000 word mark last weekend and I stopped. That’s it. I’m done for NaNoWriMo and I’m not going to try to get to 50,000. Even now, I only need to write just over 2,800 words per day to get there but I’m going to stop. Before you start posting the virtual white feathers for an act of writing cowardice, let me explain.
The rest of my life is knocking on the door with increasing insistence and no little irritation.
And I’ve already got what I need out of it. I’ve had three weeks of regular writing and it has been rather wonderful. I started as a writer of fiction with lots of ideas and an utterly feeble word count. Now I can see a path to regular words and a steady output. One that I can manage with the rest of my life. That is more than I could have dared hope.
I’ve made a note of the key lessons for me from NaNoWriMo 2015.
#No. 1 Write In Sprints
Writing in 10-11 minute ‘sprints’ works well for me and I can fit it around my daily work. I work fulltime — several days a week at a University and when I’m not there I’ve got clinics and stuff. Writing sprints could be squeezed in anywhere and I could plan out my day. I worked out I was, on average, writing around 350 words in a single sprint. Three writing sprints would almost always take me past 1000 words. You only need to do five per day to hit the NaNoWriMo target. Two in the morning, two in the afternoon and two in the evening gave me a healthy 2,000 words per day.
#No.2 I Need A Plan
In my one and only other NaNoWriMo back in 2011 I got to 50,000 words. I started out with a rough premise and then just pantsed it out. I’ve never been able to able to make anything of that work and there are probably three or four individual stories that could be teased out of the 50K. I learned plenty but it didn’t go further. Pantsing was liberating but limiting. I started sluggishly this year then took a day where I concentrated on sketching out a proper outline. When I had a clear idea of scenes, tied to my writing sprint routine, I found writing 2,000 words a day was straightforward and could be fitted around my other work. It’s sustainable. And if I’m going to make anything of this writing lark it has got to be that. I want to be a writer. I’m not buying a lottery ticket.
#No. 3 Technology is Procrastination
I don’t need apps to write. I picked one and resisted the urge to fiddle with it (Scrivener in case you are wondering). The one bit of technology that has proved invaluable is a dirt cheap digital watch with a vibrating alarm. I use this to time my sprints. I could use some kind of timing app on my MacBook but I like the fact I can’t look at it during a writing sprint. The key with the sprints is to just go for it. Focus. Don’t hold back, just keep writing. The vibrating alarm doesn’t startle me and doesn’t bother other folk if I’m writing in Starbucks. It has also made it easier for me to get up earlier in the morning — my wife hates being woken up and the old alarm did have a beep-beep that had more in common with trepanning than The Road Runner. Now I can get up earlier without disturbing her. You don’t have to get up much earlier to bang out a couple of writing sprints.
#No.4 My Weakest Areas
The 30,000 words has highlighted some important areas where I need to improve. (All of them, just some more than others.)
When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
Elmore Leonard.
Not a problem for me just yet. This may not be usual but I have a tendency to underwrite. My writing is far too sparse and scenes that I am visualising in my head aren’t getting fully expressed on the page. Scenes that should probably be taking up a couple of thousand words are petering out within 750 words. I need to work on that. I also need to add more conflict and ramp up emotional intensity in each encounter. No one wants to read a pile of leaden description but I need to get better at adding a sense of place.
#No.5 Word Count Obsession
I think it is important to measure your word count. You need to have an idea of what you are doing and the very act of writing it down has been helpful. I can identify what worked well and how to get the most from my meagre time. But my problem with NaNoWriMo is that my interest verges on obsessional. My word count needs to take out a restraining order on me. I was writing in Scrivener and almost every couple of minutes I’d hit Shift-Cmd-T to check on it. Not good.
#No.6 Fix The Story
I’ve realised that if I stalled with my writing it wasn’t because I was ‘blocked’ in some indefinable way. It was because I had a story problem. The key to it was to almost certainly go back and fix the story. Once I had the scenes right then the flow wasn’t far off. The story that I wrote for NaNoWriMo turns out to be broken — I’m going to keep writing it but rather then splurge another 20,000 words in a random direction I need to fix the story first.
#No. 7 Time is precious
You knew this. Everyone knows this — so why is it so hard to say no? To fillet out all the wasted tasks and activities in our lives. This is my last lesson and it is the one that quitting early is giving me. I could write another 20,000 words from my current position and get over the finish line. However, it will result in an awful lot of garbage that is likely to get cut in the future. I need to do some other writing — you know, the stuff about medicine and injecting drug users that I actually get paid for.
I’ve only so much time and I am going to take these valuable lessons and leg it. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure but three weeks did it for me.
So, the title is a little misleading. I’m not regarding this as a failure and NaNoWriMo 2015 has been an enormous fillip to my writing. These are incredibly valuable lessons to take from just 21 days of writing. It’s taught me a lot, given me areas to work on, and shown me a way I can keep getting out the words while working fulltime, spending time with my family, and still doing all the other things that make me tick. That’s a great result.
