As promised, I’m back today to tell you the things about NaNoWriMo I love, despite my choice to fail this year. So, in wonderful listy form, here I go:

1) It forces you to actually finish.

Okay, so obviously that is not true. But the idea is still there. NaNoWriMo is great for the writer who has been struggling to finish anything she’s started. It gives a goal and a deadline, which is something many writers don’t give themselves. It is amazing how much more productive one is when one has a goal and a deadline. Many new writers won’t do it, so NaNoWriMo does it for them.

 
2) The communtity.

The forums at NaNoWriMo.org are filled with others just like you: semi-crazy writers trying to create their novels. They give support, help you bounce ideas around, and when things are looking down they do whatever possible to bring you back up again. The forums are fun, entertaining, educational, and a great place to meet new writer friends. Yes, there are many other forums out there that offer a place for writers to hang out, but the NaNo forums are special for many writers.

3) You have no choice but to turn the internal editor.

When you are trying to crank out 50,000 words in only 30 days,  you can’t go back to edit things. You just can’t. Not if you want to be able to meet your goal, at least.

It’s a hard thing to so, but turning off that part of the brain that wants perfection is a wonderful, beautiful thing. NaNoWriMo can help teach you to do that, and in the process free your mind for future drafts as well.

4) In the end, you have a finished draft!

Many writers will write for years and years without actually finishing something they start. It’s great to get practice putting words on paper, but that’s only part of the battle. We need to finish what we start in order to really grow. For many, the first time they ever finished a draft came during NaNoWriMo.

5) It teaches that YOU CAN DO IT!

November is over and you have a shiny (okay, probably pretty murky) first draft in hand. You did it! How long have you been working at this dream, thinking that maybe you would never be able to write a book? Now you have. NaNoWriMo has taught many people that they actually have it in them to write a book. For me, it wasn’t NaNo, but I did prove to myself that I could actually write a book by forcing myself to do it all in a month. Now that I know I can do it, the process is much less daunting and I can take my time to make the book better, knowing that in the end I CAN FINISH.

You might also like:

• NaNo Tip: the late and brief version
• What I want most
• NaNo Tip: Sara Zarr
• All the things, why do they happen in November?
• NaNo Productivity Tip: Dress for Success

We’re a week into NaNoWriMo, and last night I deleted my words. Every. Single. One. Then I opened up a new file and started again. Did I just ruin my chances of getting 50,000 words this month? Well, never say never, but yeah, I probably did.

And I am totally okay with that.

You see, my goal is to write a book that I can make great. I know it won’t be great in the first draft, but I want to have the platform to make it so. I wasn’t getting that with what I was writing in my NaNoNovel, so I decided to call a mulligan and do it over.

Normally, I am a huge advocate of the don’t get it right, get it written camp, meaning I think one should push all the way through a first draft before going back to try to edit it. That’s how I’ve written before and it has worked beautifully. This time, however, I couldn’t make myself keep moving forward because I knew what I was working on was wrong, wrong, wrong.

It had the wrong narration, the entirely wrong tone. I could have kept moving forward – I could have written the whole book – but I knew in the end that the only way to salvage what was there would to completely rewrite it. So I decided to take a step back, evaluate what would be best for my book, and ultimately start again.

The plot and action are exactly the same, but what I wrote last night is completely different from what I had before. The tone is what I had in mind when Geek Husband and I planned the book out. It fits with the vision I have in my head, where what I wrote before doesn’t. I might have had to throw out a lot of words, but it’s all okay, because what I wrote last night sets me up for success with this book.

Some might say that, in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I should have changed the tone when I realized there was an issue and then fixed the beginning to match during edits. Anything to plow through and get the first draft done this month. Shoot, once upon a time, I would have been one of those people. But I’ve learned something over the past few years of writing: yes, first drafts are all crappy – as is the nature of a first draft – but I am better off taking the time and detours needed to give myself a solid foundation than pushing through for the sake of getting more words on the paper.

I guess what it boils down to is expressed perfectly in the quote above. What I want now is to write this first draft and break-neck speed and finish it this month. What I want now is to win NaNoWriMo. But is that what I want most?

I gave that a lot of thought last night before trashing what I’d written. And the answer is: No, winning NaNoWriMo is not what I want most. What I want most is to write as solid a draft as possible on the first go-around. And, as much as I wish it weren’t the case, that is going to take some time. More than one frantic month, surely.

(Even though I decided it is not the best route for me this time, I still adore NaNoWriMo. In fact, come back tomorrow for a post on all the things about NaNoWriMo that I think are fabulous!)

You might also like:

• NaNo Tip: the late and brief version
• NaNoWriMo Love
• NaNo Tip: Sara Zarr
• All the things, why do they happen in November?
• NaNo Productivity Tip: Dress for Success