Friday

What I learned from FAILING NaNoWriMo 2010

Well, week one was almost too easy.  I was sitting high on my throne, looking down at the common man and laughing.

Ah, such skill.  I won't even need 30 days! I thought to myself.


Then real life rolled over me, backed up and rolled over me again.  Enough of my excuses.  This is what I learned from FAILING NaNoWriMo 2010:

  1. Setting goals is good.  Winging it is bad. When I wrote I wrote well, but I allowed myself to begin to slack when I thought it was going too easy.  Sticking to the 1,667+ words a day is an attainable goal...if you hold yourself to it.

  2. I sometimes have the attention span of a 5th grader. When I set a goal which requires a consistent output as in NaNoWriMo, I need to remove distraction.  No cell phone beeping incessantly with text and email.  No TV. No Facebook or gaming breaks.  Not until the work is done.

  3. I am not a seat of the pants writer, I need an outline. I think the idea of people just writing, letting the words/characters lead them, is an overly romanticized notion.  I'd love for it to work that way, but as well as I did write, I know now it would have gone better if I'd had better focus and direction.  Not that the story won't take a twist or a turn on its own, or even take a new direction entirely, but I need a road map so I at least end up in the right state.

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