Random Shit

Nanowrimo 2019

Ayo! It's officially December which means that November is over since that is how calendars work, duh. Anyway, for those of you who aren't aware, every November, there's something called Nanowrimo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal every year is to write 50,000 words in the month. That's roughly the size of a 200 page book. I'm happy to announce that this year, I won Nanowrimo. 

In total, in November, I wrote 55,844 words. During the month, there were 8 days that I didn't write anything at all but for the most part I made it a good habit to write every day. In previous years, the most I was ever able to write was 17,000 words. This isn't just a bragging post though. I just wanted to talk a little bit about how I was able to do it, what it was like and tips of how you can write more too.

So as you can see, I spent the whole month working ahead on Our World. I managed to wipe out 10 chapters during the month, and if you know anything about that book, you know that the chapters are looooong. I was glad to get a chance to keep ahead of the game so that I never have to worry about a deadline every Thursday. I'm set at least a month in advance for each chapter now. Ahh, peace of mind.

Alright, so what was different this year that I was able to write so much and reach and surpass my goal?

I would say that the biggest and most important reason Nanowrimo and writing in general came so easy to me this year was because I actually found a project I was excited about and passionate about. In the past, I would just try to write to say that I could write but now I'm better at fleshing out plots and where the story on the whole is going.

I also had a rough draft to work with this time around whereas before I was trying to make it all up as I go. Since Our World started as a RP, a lot of the dialogue and actions and setting were all set in advance. So instead of having to figure out the story AND make it sound pretty, I only did one at a time. For the rough draft, it's sloppy, hideous writing. Crude as can be. But the bones of the story were all there. All that was left for me to do was actually WRITE it.

Another reason why I think I reached my goal this year as opposed to the past is because I wouldn't wait until I was in the mood to write. If you do that, it could take days, weeks, months or never. I found that sometimes just bringing up the Google Doc and diving in whether I was in the mood or not would still produce good results. The thing about writing is, it can always be edited later and made better. So I fully believe it's better to have something written even if you think it's bad than nothing at all. It's how you grow. Sometimes I'd think what I wrote was garbage but then I'd go back the next day and read it and enjoy it.

Nanowrimo made writing more fun too because it was encouraging seeing my goal right in front of my eyes and watching the progress that I was making. It made it so that I would try and push myself to write more than I did the day before as an overachiever. 

Here's a little look at how my writing progressed:

As you can see, some days I was more inspired than others and some days I didn't write at all. But still I could see I was staying well ahead of the curve and it kept me inspired to keep going.

Now here's a look at my daily word count:

The most I wrote in one day was 6,697 words. The least was 0. On average, I wrote 1,861 words per day. 

Now you may be thinking, Oh my God, you lunatic! How many hours a day did you write? But the answer is not too many. Usually I wrote for about 2 hours every afternoon. It's a decent amount of time for me. Not too much, not too little. Just right. Think about it. I'm sure there's an hour or two every day that you waste on your phone that you could spend writing if you wanted to reach your goal.

I know that I'm a lot older than most of you on here (I'm 25) but I also think that someone at any age can write a novel. Christopher Paolini was only 15 when he wrote Eragon, a massively popular book series about dragons. You just have to keep writing. Even if you think you suck. I promise you, the more you write, the better you will get. 

It has always been my dream to write a REAL book. You know, one that gets published. So in 2020 I'm making it my goal to try and do just that. I already know what it's going to be about and can't wait to get started. I'm going to spend the rest of the year trying to finish up Our World as much as I can and then kick off the year working towards my dream.  But don't worry, I'll still be around making crack comments and of course updating my WWYD book. 

Anyway, this is getting long (like every thing else I write) so I'm going to wrap this up by saying how thankful I am for Wattpad and the awesome people I've met on here who've helped me get back into writing. Before Wattpad I stopped writing for about three years and I'm very glad to be back in the swing of things again, more so than ever before. I hope 2020 is a year where your dreams can come true. Let's kick the next decade's assholbun together.