Nanowrimo follow up.

I have to say that the Nanowrimo was great experience. I started late and had to hit it pretty hard, but was able to finish a winner.



I had to average more than 2000 words per day. It was interesting to see my attitude change while the word count climbed. On the Nano site they give you encouragement based on where the average person would be on that day of the month. Starting ten days late, I could get the advance scoop on when I should start getting discouraged.



The first 10,000 words were a lot of fun, and everyday I felt like I had the whole world at my disposal and everything would be wonderful. The next 15,000 words were written from under a fog of discouragement. Every night when I sat down to write I would ask myself if I could do this, or if I shouldn't just quit now.



The weekend before Thanks Giving I pumped out a lot of words and brought myself to where a lot of other writers were, and I could see that I just might pull it off.



As I finished my last words on November 29th, I had a feeling of satisfaction that I had set a goal, worked hard, and completed it. I also thought that I had written 50,000 words of rubbish, and had expressed that sentiment to several people since completion.



However, I have started my first edit and rewrite and have found that I really like my story. I have found many places that I now feel are trite and some others that were poorly written. But I like it enough to go back through and make it right.



My goal has alway been to podcast a story. The original plan was for my scouting story, but I want to do this one. I am practicing recording my reading by participating in the 100 word weekly challenge, and now I have also entered in Jeff Hites short story podcast as well.



The plan is to spend the next two months editing and rewriting. Then have my brother proof read the story, and do a third rewrite. Finally, I want to take a week off in March or April and record the entire story. I don't know if I'll be able to get all the episodes produced in that week, but I should have a big portion of it done.



I emailed Mur Lafferty about my Nano experience and she read some of it on 'I should be writing' podcast. Here is the portion that applied to Nanowrimo:

These are the things that I learned from Nano.

Plot happens. I had listened to you, your interviews, and feedback talking about words per day. I always thought, ‘what a mechanical and unartistic way to create’! I found that putting out 1500 to 4000 words in a day squeezed creativity out of me that I didn’t know that I had. Plot twists appeared from around corners, and my characters started saying and doing some interesting things.

I also came to understand what ‘organic writing’ is. I would sit down at 8:30 pm, with a Monster energy drink, knowing that I needed 2000 words before bed. I knew where I wanted the story to go, but not outlined bit by bit.

Write now, rewrite later. If I worried about spelling, grammar, and consistency, or even coherencey, (at 10:30 pm, I get up at 4:30 am), I could get about 500 words per hour. Throwing all that to the wind, I would get 1000 + per hour.

Finnally. It’s a better story than I thought. After it was over and people would ask me, “Did you make it?” I would respond with, “Yeah, but it’s mostly rubbish.” I started my rewrite yesterday and found that I really like my story. It has potential and I might as well take it as far as I can. (Being a big Nathan Lowell fan, [not to mention a big Mur Lafferty fan]), I am going to podcast it initially, while submitting it to regular publishers. If I can cast a shadow even faintly comparable to these two giants, I will feel gratified.