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[n7punk]

NaNoWriMo rundown 2021

I officially finished the first draft of my novel this morning, so I thought I’d do a little rundown!

Now, keep in mind this is only a first draft. NaNoWriMo usually involves little to no editing or refining. I kept notes as I went of some things I wanted to fix, though I did edit a little as I went this year (AKA if I wasn’t feeling a scene, I deleted it and started over, losing it from my word count, which isn’t how I think most people do NaNoWriMo). It isn’t how I have done NaNoWriMo previously, but I also have only finished NaNo with a novel that I ever wanted to share with anybody or even touch again once, and in hindsight that novel was terrible.

My plan this year is to step back from my novel for like a month, writing a long fanfiction instead, and then take another break from fic to do my second draft/revision. I’m planning to continue alternating between (roughly) a month spent on fanfiction and then a month spent on an original project for next year. I will revise this novel until I’m happy with it and then switch to working on a new one (I have several ideas saved up) and do the same revision/switching between original stuff and fanfiction process with it as well.

Okay, as far as my NaNo experience went, I started off in kind of a rough place. For the first two days of November I was still working on my last fanfiction from October, WDtFD. October was also my most productive word count month this year (because I was really motivated with my projects and wanted to get them both done before November) and it meant that I started NaNoWriMo kind of burnt out. I spent the first several days behind and making minimal progress. Eventually I realized that I hated the opening I’d written, even if I liked the concept, so it was extremely difficult to write anything following it.

I bit the bullet and rewrote it even though deleting words when I was already behind was the last thing I wanted to do. This ended up being a great decision, because I was able to start getting into my novel finally. On the first weekend of NaNo, the GWIC was held and my word count skyrocketed (the first giant 7k spike on my graph below). My word count still stayed very variable throughout the month (and, as usual, any productive day had to be followed by a valley as my chronic pain flared), but I stayed above the goal line for the rest of the month after that.

Daily word count graph (and NaNo calling me out):

And my total graph:

(You can clearly see where the GWIC was with that big bump early on. I only heard about it halfway through the third day, so I was only there for the last day & a half)

As far as my draft goes, I’m pretty happy with it! I don’t love it like I do some of my other works, but I think it’s a fun little romantic romp. It is character-driven, not plot/conflict-focused, so I think it’s kind of a nice fluff piece revolving around the queer experience (or, one of them, there is no singular experience). It definitely needs revision, but I want to step back from it so I can edit it with fresh eyes, and I want to write something more dramatic now, so I’m going to switch to a different project for a bit. I tend to have this pattern of working on a “simpler” project (something set in the modern world without a dark/dramatic plot) and a “complicated” one (one set in its own universe or with a big complex plot), so now I’m on the complicated swing after this simple project.

I was actually supposed to do a different novel entirely for NaNo. I switched at the last second because my last project was one of those “complicated” ones with many plot threads and I just wanted to do something light. The novel I ended up doing I was also excited for, but it didn’t have the worldbuilding/planning that the first one did, so I ended up flying by the seat of my pants for the entire month, which I think shows in the draft. I’m going to work on introducing more structure when I revise it, but I’m honestly glad I switched because it gives me more time to worldbuild the novel that I was planning on. It needs a lot of depth and I’m excited for when I do write it. In fact, I’ve kind of been bit by the bug for it again and might spend the rest of November working on it before I focus on fanfiction again. We’ll see. I miss my girls too and want to write them again as well.

Anyway, that has pretty much been my NaNo! As always, I adore NaNoWriMo and this was actually my fifth full novel that I’ve written over the course of one. I’ve skipped some years or written fanfiction instead, but I participated in my first NaNoWriMo in 2012. I’ve won every year I’ve tried to write a story for it, although one year I tried to write a DND campaign and quit like a week in when I realized I wasn’t interested in it and my outline for a campaign was very bare-bones and wasn’t going to ever match a NaNo word count. I then stopped doing NaNo for a few years, only resuming last year, but I’m glad that I’m back to it because the community around it really feels amazing.