NaNoWriMo Week 4 – Crossing The Finish Line

NaNoWriMo 2015 Winner Badge50,435 words.  The novel is nowhere near done, but I’m stepping away for a while.

The beginning of the week was going well.  The new outline seems to be working better.  I’ve identified a few holes in the new one.  The good thing is I know how to plug them after a few second’s thought. My plan is to take a break from this story when NaNoWriMo is done and work on the outline for another idea I have.  I’ve got extensive notes, so I will be in a good place to pick back up.

Then I hit the five day stretch I was dreading.  The combo of my birthday and Thanksgiving went well because I made the best thing possible for that day – reservations!  I managed to hit my word count, and catch up to where I was supposed to be after not writing for four days the prior week.  Friday I was off having fun with friends at the Dickens Faire, so I only got about 600 words done.  Which left me Saturday and Sunday to finish 6,000 words.

But wait, I hear you cry.  You still have Monday to work on your story.  Any other year I would say yes.  However, Monday is also the 30th anniversary of my father’s death.  It’s been an emotional rollercoaster of a year, and everything is crashing down.  I’ve been feeling stress and depression building, and I suspect that I won’t get much done today.

So what have I learned from this NaNoWriMo?

  • November is a horrible month for me to attempt something like this.  I may consider doing a private one during a different month in the future.
  • I can comfortably write 500 words a day, 1,000 if I want to stretch, but above 1,500 is a strain.
  • I can write daily.
  • That said, skipping one day and making up for it the next can do more for your sanity than powering through.
  • Outlines are good for finding your destination, but not an absolute road map.

Will I do NaNoWriMo next year?  That depends on what I have going on at the time.  I made the choice to do it this year over working on something else.  All I know is that I made it through this one, even if the first draft isn’t near complete.  I’m content with that.