NaNoWriMo 2017 Reflections and Dissection–and an Exciting Announcement!

The 2017 NaNoWriMo challenge finished yesterday. As regular readers know, I participated in the challenge this year (hence, the sparse blog content for the past month), so I thought I’d give you a run-down on how I did and what I learned. There’s also an exciting announcement embedded in this report, so read on!

We Know You Told Us One Time, But What Is NaNoWriMo Again?

The purpose of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is to encourage aspiring novelists to quit talking about how they might one day write a novel, and actually do it. The original organizers hoped that out of the project, more people would appreciate what it takes to write a novel, many would feel the joy of being creative, and some would end up launching a writing career. I’m not sure why they chose November. Seems a bit arbitrary. And with Thanksgiving in the US being the last Thursday of November, it isn’t necessarily the best month for it. But that hasn’t stopped it being insanely popular. Participants are required to write at least 50,000 words by November 30th. Again, that seems a bit arbitrary. Unless you’re writing Middle Grade, 50k doesn’t make for a novel. Okay, and unless you’re Nicholas Sparks. But for most of the rest of us… 🙂 I think the organizers reckoned if you haven’t ever written a novel before, 50k seems like a lot, so actually writing 50k is an enormous achievement (and it is for anyone). Also, if you manage to write 50k, writing another 20-30k isn’t as daunting as it first seems.

What Did I Do?

As I mentioned in a previous article, my NaNo project this year was a re-write of an epic tale I wrote about ten years ago, then shelved, promising myself I would return to it some day. The original was about 300,000 words long, and full of clunky sentences, indulgent world-building, and awkward descriptions. I liked the story, however, and thought it worthy of the work. Coming to it again I decided that, even after editing, it would end up being at least a two-novel series, so my NaNo challenge would focus on writing a new first draft of Book 1.

How Did I Do?

It took me 21 days to complete the 50,000-word challenge. I ended up writing 62,537 words at the end of 30 days, finishing the first draft of the first book in the series. So, YAY! I won NaNoWriMo 2017!!

Does this mean I have a novel ready to go through revisions, beta reads, and querying for an agent and eventually publication?

No. Not in the slightest. Let me explain.

I’ve learned quite a bit over the ten years since I first wrote this story, not only about writing, but also about what makes a story work. Everything from the age of the characters to the amount of conflict to pacing, and a whole host of other things. I knew from the opening paragraph that there were structural issues that needed to be addressed. The first thing I changed was the characters’ ages. In my “synopsis” I said the characters were college-age. I decided the story would work better, and appeal to a wider audience, if I aged them up a bit and set them in a work environment, not a school environment. This worked even better than I expected. But it became clear to me as I approached the end of the first book that there were still problems. While there are moments of intense conflict, I don’t think there’s enough early on to keep readers interested. But more than that, this story has some major motivational issues. The reasons why the characters do some fairly radical things, and make some life-threatening decisions, seem flimsy at best. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to make some deeper, more consequential changes to the plot structure for this to work.

Another consideration that tells me this story is not ready for prime time even now is the fact that I want to get an agent and go the traditional publishing route. This means my debut novel MUST be self-contained, even if it’s intended as part one of a series. If you look at any series published as an author’s debut (e.g., the Harry Potter series), you’ll notice the first novel ends in such a way that you could stop reading there. Yes, there are loose ends and questions, but at the end of the story, the hero wins, and the villain is, at least seemingly, vanquished. There’s good reason for this. Publishers invest a lot of money in the books they publish, from editing to cover design to printing to promotion. Not to mention the author’s advance. This isn’t such a big deal with an established writer. The publisher is guaranteed to make their money back, and an ongoing series will keep the fans coming back for more. With a debut novelist, however, there’s a lot of risk. What if that first book doesn’t sell? What if the author quits writing? By giving the publisher the assurance that the first book, while part of a series, can be stand-alone, the debut novelist (and his/her agent) stands a better chance of selling that novel.

Book one of my series is NOT stand-alone, and I can’t see how it could be. It’s more like THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING*, where you know the story isn’t over. Or like the end of A GAME OF THRONES, where the conflict between the kingdoms is gearing up, Daenerys has her dragon eggs, and it’s clear you need to get the next book to find out what happens.

This is why I’m shelving this project again. This is not going to be the book I query to get an agent. Not only do I need to work out the structural and motivational issues, this is not the right time in my publishing career for this series. I think it has a lot of potential. It just needs some further marinating, based on the work I’ve done this month, and it needs to wait until I’m more established as a writer.

Lessons Learned

To wrap up this reflection/dissection, here are some things I learned this past month:

1. With a bit of discipline I can be quite productive. My average word count was over 2,000 per day. And it didn’t take me all day to churn those words out. At that rate, I could be popping out a novel every couple of months! Now, realistically, that won’t happen because books need to be edited, and writers need reading time, and, well, life. But I could certainly be writing more than I am. In fact, during the first week of NaNoWriMo, I wrote a short story that has been accepted for publication by Riggwelter! (That was my exciting announcement, btw.) Look for it in the February 2018 issue. I’ll remind you closer to the time.
2. I could actually do this writing thing full-time. I’ve often wondered whether I would be disciplined enough to write if writing was my day job. When I get time off work, even if I intend to write, I don’t always take the opportunity, and I end up doing other things. This NaNoWriMo, I took two weeks off work (one near the beginning of the month, and one the week of Thanksgiving). During those weeks, I disciplined myself to work on NaNo in the late morning and afternoon, leaving evenings free to do other things. And it worked! I got stuff done.
3. I’m a writer. I hear you saying, “Well duh!! Look at your banner!” But that’s not what I mean. Have you ever done something that makes you feel complete, like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing? The thing that sends electricity through your particular wiring in a way that nothing else does? Music does that for me to an extent, but this past month has confirmed to me that writing is that thing for me. Why writing over music? I’m not sure. It’s one of those weird things that I know is true, but I couldn’t for the life of me explain it to you.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. That was my NaNoWriMo month in a very large nutshell. I’m glad I did it, and I might well do it again next year. We’ll see.

Did you do NaNoWriMo this year? If so, how did you do?

* By the way, THE LORD OF THE RINGS series was originally written as a single volume; it was the publisher who split it into three novels due to war-time paper shortages.