TGIO (Thank Goodness It's Over)
I wrote almost 30K words in November, for my first NaNoWriMo!
Every November, thousands of people do something that sounds absolutely ridiculous: As part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), they attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. That means hitting an average of 1667 words per day.
This year I joined them. I didn’t “win”: My word count at the end of November stood just shy of 30,000. But I feel great about it because:
That’s a lot!
I met some great people here in SF who I hope might become friends, and
I learned some valuable stuff about my own process, about the writing community, and about how other writers work.
How’d I do?
Ok, ok I know this is what you are all waiting for: My stats! I averaged 947 words/day in November, with a max daily output of 2,581 (on day 2).
I’m on a 50-50 child care schedule with my coparent, and it will surprise no one that my daily output was highly correlated with when I had the kids. My best streak was a four-day period from Nov 8-11 when I averaged over 2000 words per day. That was a kid-free period when I still held out hope that I could catch up and “win” by hitting 50K for the month — after getting behind during my first kid-care weekend of the month.
On the flip side, the four days of zero words around the 2/3 mark? That was the weekend before Thanksgiving, when I was carting the kids around to multiple Friendsgivings and the like. So let’s see what that chart looks like with some color commentary:
But even when I had “enough” “time” to write more, 1500 words of fiction/daily felt like the right target for me. After that, I found it hard to keep my brain in writing mode. As the chart shows, there were a few days where I got well over that, but it was a push, and often those days involved “cheating” — rewriting the same scene multiple times and counting each draft, and/or counting the words that I was writing for this newsletter.
(FWIW: I ran these “cheats” past my new friends in the SF NaNoWriMo group and they thought both of these were totally legit — though still not the fastest way to get words. One of them, for instance, told me that during NaNoWriMo he writes at a pace of 1000 words of fiction in 20 min, in part by literally banning himself from using the delete key.)
Here’s the cumulative word count chart:
Overall, this put me here at the end of the month:
About my own writing process, I also learned that:
Accountability and community are both very valuable in increasing my productivity. (Shocker!) I wrote way more words in November than I would have otherwise, because I was reporting daily word count both to the website and to the Discord server of SF Wrimos (Wrimo = someone doing NaNoWriMo).
Apparently unlike a lot of writers (?), I really need an hour-long chunk to get into the “write” (ha!) headspace. Wrimos do a lot of writing sprints together, either on Zoom or at in-person write-ins, or just using a bot on the Discord server. The standard length of time for these sprints seems to be around 20 min, which feels like barely long enough for me to get into writing mode. I was capable of forcing myself to be “productive” during a 20 min sprint, but I didn’t enjoy it — which from my perspective defeats the whole point!
Humans are strange
One final reflection: Before I started writing this novel, I had no idea how many people write fiction for fun, as a hobby, without any real intention of publishing it. NaNoWriMo really drove that home — most of the people I met had written multiple novels or novellas already, without making any effort to publish. Some of them share their writing with a few friends, and some don’t even do that.
I think this is a totally awesome fact about humanity. And also a pretty strange one when you think about it. What other human pastimes are like this?? Where you spend literally hundreds or even thousands of hours alone, creating something just for yourself, which even you might not ever “use” (in this case, read) again? Knitting creates a finished product that someone wears or keeps them warm. Most people I know who make visual art display it somewhere, at least the pieces that turn out well.
Possibly the most similar thing I can think of is solo backpacking, where you’re clearly in it primarily for the daily experience of the actual process, more than for the memories or the photos or the bragging rights. Before this year, I had no understanding of writing or storytelling as a similar pastime, where the experience of spinning the story and putting it on “paper” (or a computer screen) is an end in itself. (Readers: Got any other thoughts on similar human pastimes? If so, pop them in the comments!)
Which is all to say: After four full decades on this earth, humans continue to delight, and charm me in new and unexpected ways!
I’ll close with a big thanks to the SF Wrimos and the folks who run the national NaNoWriMo project. Y’all are some of the bigger weirdos I’ve ever met — which is a high bar! — but in an utterly delightful and charming kind of way 🤪 🥰 Yes, TGIO (Thanks Goodness It’s Over), but also TGIH (Thank Goodness It Happened)!
To readers who made it this far: I’d love to hear if you’ve ever participated in NaNoWriMo. Tell us what your experience was like in the comments!
I haven't done nanowrimo but I have thought about it over the years. I'm much more into the take a photo every day than write.
never really pulled off NaNoWriMo consistently, myself. incredible to get as much done as you did, especially with kids. when i am writing - not often lately! - i do find that most days i get spent around 1200-1400, though i've certainly had bigger days than that.
i struggle with the reality of fiction-writing-as-hobby, which honestly is the only fiction writing i've done. it's tough for me because it is, as you say, very solitary and without a lot of reward outside of itself unless you can get other people to read it, which mostly doesn't happen. i have a long-standing image of myself as a writer, but that image runs real hard up against the difficulty of actually doing it and the reality that if i do it, 99.9999% chance it really is just for me.