Greetings from the cave!
30 days and 30 million chocolates later, it seems another November has been relegated to the past. This particular NaNo seemed to zip by without much notice. Not much contact with others, not much progress.
It's weird and I don't like it.
But then, that seems to sum up the entire year, doesn't it?
Best Parts of NaNo:
- Making the midnight start. That was totally unexpected but I ended up trying to do some development beforehand and midnight rolled around and that was that!
- The one day that I found a scene prompt in my deletions and wrote 1000 words off it.
- Writing the last words before midnight. That sounds really horrible, but in the midst of the rubbish, these words actually sounded good.
What I Learned:
- Writing to match a song vibe....totally do not recommend unless looping.
- Making time to write is harrrrdddd
- When re-making a WIP, examine the old deletion files. Some gems may be stowed away *hint hint*
- Make a backup even of the rubbish writing every single freaking day. Otherwise you lose 1k of writing that could have been used later.
With that said, how did writing go?
In a word....lousy.
Being a graduate student, I do spend a lot of time writing. Just not...novel writing. This was even the case back in October, when I was prepping. The lack of development really didn't help when November rolled around either.
The lack of time really didn't help either. There were not that many days in which I could actually write. Had I had the time, I probably would be able to make at least 30k.
Instead, I wrote only....4140 words. And half of that are old words from previous drafts.
I am a little frustrated that it is so low, but I really don't know how I could have improved it. Things have been dropping left and right and so trying to keep up has been a struggle.
Though I have discovered that my MC is a downright confident, kick-butt female. Oh boi.
So....what's next?
As previously mentioned in the 2020 WIP Special, The Midnight Cave is going to be tabled for right now. The fact of the matter is that this book needs much more development in all areas and I really need to compile the rest of the notes before going much further. Really regretting the failure of Project Blueprint right about now.
The next project that will be worked on is....The White Rose! Now that she's officially back from the editor, I'm really excited to dive in during Winter Break. My heart is clearly in that project and I think that TMC will benefit much more if I get her older sister further developed (even if she doesn't think so right now).
This experience, however, has really made me re-examine me doing NaNo next year. Next fall promises to be extremely painful on the grad school front - another 9 hours of courses and 6 of those hours are very very hard. Considering my struggle this year, I would safely say that I would be better off not doing NaNo next year. Which kinda makes me sad, but at this point I think I'm going to thank myself later.
Now, what about you? Did you also participate in NaNo, and if so, how did it go? What was your project? Tell me in the comments below!
Scribbingly yours,
Catherine
