This is my third year participating in NaNoWriMo. Above was the award for my first attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in November, which I completed by Nov. 29.
What is NaNoWriMo? According to their website: “National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing.”
A funny thing happened a few months after my first try. My computer randomly began deleting files (not really funny!) I worked with Apple for three full days, but never got my manuscript “The Playgroup” back. It was gone along with many other things including my HOA newsletters. I thought I had a backup automatically scheduled every week. But I was wrong about that. Nothing hurt more than losing losing that one file of 50,000 words.
One day when my son was four or five, he deleted all my writing files from our Apple computer. I don’t know why he did it, or if he knew what he did. I literally started screaming and crying all at once. I must have terrified him.
That’s how I felt when my laptop randomly did the same thing. Apple knew what caused it, but didn’t admit to me that it was a known issue. They did say it wasn’t a software issue, but was due to hardware.
My second year of NaNoWriMo was 2023.
I had recovered mentally enough to recreate my manuscript. Then a few months later, I signed up for an online writing class on plots. I view my writing as more character driven and I wanted to improve my plotting. LA from Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50 was taking classes with Gotham Writers. I decided to sign up, too. For my final assignment, which was creating a complex plot, I used my Playgroup manuscript for the outline. I got good feedback from the instructor on how to improve and make the plot stronger.
Fast forward to November 2024
I’m using the notes the instructor from Gotham Writers Workshop gave me to revise my manuscript. I had tinkered with it earlier this year, but got bogged down. I tend to revise only a few words here or there. Big changes eluded me.
But with NaNoWriMo and writing every day with accountability, I am getting to the meat of revising. I’m making big changes. I’m adding chapters and deleting a character. If it doesn’t move the story forward, it’s gone. It’s not really a matter of writing so many words each day as in previous years. It’s more sitting down every day and working on it for an hour or two and letting the drama unfold.
If you have participated in NaNoWriMo, what was your experience like?
When you edit or revise, do you tend to tinker around the edges or take a chain saw to your projects?
