Whew, I finally got some time to fix up the website a little. I updated my “Currently Reading” at the trusty right-hand side, and updated my reading list a little. But, unfortunately, I lost a lot of my emails from before December 1st. So if you emailed me and haven’t received a reply, please email me again!

OK, now that’s out of the way, I promised in the last entry that I would write more about my Nanowrimo experience, because I really do believe that this time I think I learned more about myself and my writing than ever before — which is one thing I love about Nanowrimo, and one thing that keeps me doing it, year after year. Every time I learn something new about myself. So what did I learn this year? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.

One, sometimes you have to kill your darlings. I know, I know, this is a lesson every writer should know, but it’s one you have to keep teaching yourself because it’s annoying every time. Only recently, for “Morgan”, I finally had to admit that I’m going to have to cut out a character that I really like. In fact, in “Morgan” I had to cut out a lot of things I liked because I moved the whole story 200 years forward in the timeline! Suddenly, the whole world I was setting the story in changed, and because of that, there was no room for my character, Jace, in this new world. Don’t worry, Jace, I thought, I’ll get you in the next one… The same happened to me in “Tayce” (the working title of my Nanowrimo novel). I had this really cool scene I had planned out involving a zombie named Rachel. I had written the scene, liked it, moved on, and about 20,000 words later I realized that the scene was superfluous. I hadn’t mentioned Rachel again! So, when Nanowrimo was done (like I’d cut it out and loose 5,000+ words during Nanowrimo!) I had to delete the whole, entire thing (which means I copy and pasted it into my “Junk” folder where all the stuff that doesn’t fit and is waiting for a new home goes).

Two, if you keep yourself open to the muse, she’ll do magical things. It’s true! I’ve heard these stories of authors saying, “I’ll just be writing along and all of a sudden, BOOM!, something’ll happen that I totally didn’t expect.” That really hadn’t happened to me. Everything in my story that happened — even the surprises — had been at least semi-expected by me, but this Nanowrimo, I do believe I let myself completely go. I finally relinquished control! *gasp*, which is the lesson, let the control go! Nanowrimo is wonderful for that, you’re so busy trying to make word count goals, you don’t really notice the writing and suddenly magical things slip in direct from the Muse. So, finally, I can say that my Muse really surprised me this time around. For example, my Muse introduced a whole new character to me — Agent Henry. And an organization I had not planned to put in my world — the Department of Supernatural and Magical Beings. Which, while not being the most original concept, proved to create some interesting tension in my world. It also wrote some interesting scenes, ones I didn’t even realize I’d write until I’d put it down. I didn’t agonize, “What happens next?” and for once, the only writer’s block I had was when I was so stressed out from school that I couldn’t devote enough time to get comfortable enough to write. But it wasn’t because I didn’t know what was going to happen next (because, for once, that didn’t matter)!

Three, it’s a first draft, don’t worry how it looks. My Nanowrimo was a freaking mess, and for once I didn’t care! In the beginning, I killed off a character named Fredericka, but three chapters later I realized that Fredericka still had an important part to play in the story. So suddenly, Fredericka was alive again! I didn’t even go back and edit (scandalous!) because I wanted to save the word count. I just kept on chugging. And then, three chapters after Fredericka was brought back to life…I killed her off again! My Nanowrimo has many inconsistencies and things I’m going to have to go back and edit, but I realized I had to get it down on paper first because I wasn’t sure how things progressed (I had a general idea, a very loose outline in my head, but I wasn’t exactly sure how things were going to get from Point A to Point B all the time). Get it down, fix it later. There’s going to be a lot of red on my edits, and a lot of arrows.

Four, always, always, ALWAYS back up my work. Ohmigod, I suffered because I forgot to back up and I lost my USB key. I had 14,000 words I had written on “Tayce,” my second edit on the first chapter of “Morgan,” two mini-chapters in a novella I had begun, and my final edit of “The Corpse” (a short story) and…I lost all of it! Not to mention a bunch of homework, notes, and stuff in my Junk folder. While I can rewrite everything…who knows what kind of inspiration has really been lost? *sigh* To say the cliche: You never worry — until it happens to you! Bah. I even have a spare hard drive from an old laptop I salvaged. I just gotta get off my butt and find an enclosure for it.

Anywho, nothing in the above list probably seems like a huge epiphany, but they were for me. And I’ve noticed that recently my writing has been much less stressful and pushed out, it’s been more natural (whether that’s because of the end of Nanowrimo, who knows?).

If you’ve done Nanowrimo, did you learn anything about your writing self, your Muse, or your writing style?

4:22 pm | Category: Nanowrimo | |

2 Responses to “I made 50,000 words! (part 2)” 

ID: 191 December 14th, 2007 at 9:29 am aileen says: righto about backups! I save files I type or create probably every minute while I’m working on them

ID: 192 December 15th, 2007 at 9:29 pm easywriter says: Hmmmm…mmmm…I forget to back up sometimes too and I’ve lots a dreadful amounmt of work because of it and it never gets written the same way again. I’ve finally learned though, save, save, save. You almost have me convinced to come out of my shell and try Nano next year. I need to learn to let go too.

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