November held many distractions: temp job (supposed to be 1-2 weeks, starting in October; I just finished with it yesterday – 8.5 weeks later), real-job searching, and epic flea battle. It started slow, with a lack of interest in my novel combined with a ton of ideas for new short stories. It ended with many nearly sleepless nights and 50,006 words of crap. And this:
Fortunately I’d roughly plotted out the whole thing, and as I wrote, I figured out more – double agents, Tesla knockoffs, and magic mirrors. It’s a rough draft, of course, but I think I can smooth it out into something worth reading.
My main takeaway from NaNoWriMo this year is to not procrastinate as severely next year. That last week sucked; I was writing nonstop, mostly to get words down without thinking of character development or subplots, and that part will definitely need to be heavily revised, which means I’ve created more work for myself. But at least I finished, right?
If you did NaNo, how’d it go? Did you learn anything about yourself or the writing process this year?
Congratulations! Way to pull it through. :)
Thanks!