Lost in NaNoWriMo
Andrew Neel, Pexels
Last year I did NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) as a discovery writer. It went… okay. I won NaNo (by which I mean I completed 50,000 words of a story), but what I was left with was a mess. So this year I decided I’d try the other way, as a plotter. And it didn’t work.
Plotter: Successes
I managed to write every day. Not enough, but I did manage to keep plugging away at it.
I solved a couple of major issues. I was struggling with my main character, and I think I have a better version of her now. I also managed to solve some issues around her motivation.
In both years, I got about 10 days in and realised I had some major issues. So all the plotting did nothing to help that. The solution I came up with last year was not a good one. It got me through NaNo, but it left the story in a very odd place and I didn’t know how to fix it. I will say that I think my solution this year is a lot better.
PLOTTER: The Problems
I was lacking motivation compared to last year. I wanted to try planning versus discovery writing, and I think I now know which one of these is for me. I just can’t feel the enthusiasm for the story and every little thing was distracting me and sounded like a better story. That did not happen last year.
I don’t feel like what I am writing is any better for being planned. In fact, I think its worse. I find I can think more on technical things as I know what the scene is meant to do, but as I write by hand, I can’t really implement that well.
I feel like the story is missing something. And because I have it all laid out, that feeling is stronger.
What next?
I’d written around 11k words - getting ever further behind where I needed to be. And then I decided to abandon the project. There had been another option, something I almost considered switching to in October. The plan was to just write 40k words about it. No planning. No preparation. Just write.
I’ve answered the question about what kind of writer I am. Now I need to learn how to make that work.
