WHAT I LEARNED FROM NaNoWriMo

I’m looking forward to December 1st to discover how many of the 70,000 of us who entered NaNo will have completed the 50,000 word goal. Several of my writing friends have finished with time to spare and I’m so proud of them and inspired by the effort they put in to accomplish this. Let me tell-ya, it ain’t easy.

I won’t be crossing the finish line and the truth is even if my priority to be there for Teressa when Enrique died last week hadn’t taken precedent over writing, I probably still wouldn’t have made the 50,000 words. I was progressing at a slow speed.

I’m happy I signed up for NaNo and plan on joining in next year. The little word count widget disappeared when I updated to the new blogger version and I didn’t bother to upload another so just for the record I finished with 13,055. Here are all the great things I’ve learned from this writing experience.

1) I learned it feels good to be part of a writing community working towards the same goal.
2) I learned how to write in short spurts and not get frustrated when uninterrupted time wasn’t available.
3) For the first time ever I kept writing to get the story out without reading back. I learned it’s very freeing to turn the internal editor off while moving ahead with the story.
4) I learned I can’t do much more than journal writing when I’m sad.
5) I learned my husband is supportive of my writing except when he’s hungry, or has a question, or wants to talk about the great golf shot he made.

For sure more things I learned will come to me after I post this.

I’m committed to keep going with the story Costa Azul. Most of what I’ve written so far is back story and too narrative while I’ve been getting to know the characters and most of the 13,055 words will get cut when I get to the second draft stage. That’s okay because I’ll be using more dialogue, more action and throwing in more conflict. All the ingredients I’m learning are needed to make a good story better.

To keep progressing with my learning I’ve enrolled in a three week class that focus’ on one of the hardest elements of writing to master, the class is called - Creating Conflict. Please, no chuckles or comments from family members as you may be thinking I should be the teacher not the student.