Secretly Doing NaNoWriMo for Years
Every year in November, the excitement of National Novel Writers Month(NaNoWriMo) descends upon the internet. People are drafting their outlines and busting out their copies of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. My online writer’s groups are full of the energy around writing sprints and trying to meet their word count goal for the month. Traditionally, to “win” NaNoWriMo, you need to write 50,000 words in November, which boils down to about 1700 words a day.
50,000 words stresses me out
I’m a mom of four school-aged kids who works full time and doesn’t write fast. My writing goals tend to be “write for ten minutes each evening,” “publish a blog post each month,” or “write my morning pages every day.” Thousands of words a week is an order of magnitude higher than my usual word count goals.
The other issue with NaNoWriMo is it fiction focused and I’m a blogger. I have had a novel idea kicking around in my head for years, but mostly I write non-fiction. I’m not really the target market.
Clearly, the word count for NaNoWriMo stresses me out and I’m a blogger, so the fun book writing energy can wash over me, but I thought I’d never join in the fun. So here I am, watching the fun and frenzy of NaNoWriMo once again. I’ve never signed up, joined a group, or a writing sprint. My word count doesn’t go on the website.
Riding the NaNoWriMo wave
But the thing is, I wrote a book last year in November. I got an idea and plotted it out in my Scanner Planner a la Barbara Sher. The date on this page says 11/11/2021, so the idea came to me mid-NaNoWriMo last year. Here’s a photo of the planning page. Disclaimer: I can’t stand the idea of rewriting my journal pages to make them look perfect or clean, so this page is both hard to read and messy, but it’s guaranteed real.
I challenged myself to draft out a chapter a day. The chapters were short – about 500 words each and the entire book is only 4800 words, but somehow, at the end of November, I had the first draft of a book in my hand. I don’t think it was a coincidence.
Why not make my own goal?
While NaNoWriMo happens only in November, Camp NaNoWriMo happens in April and July. Those challenges are more free form. They encourage you to pick your own writing goal, not necessarily 50,000 words. These seem like a perfect option for me. So why didn’t I just pick a smaller goal? I could have done 20 minutes a day or 600 words a day.
I’m a rule follower, so if I commit to something less than 50,000 words, I would feel like I didn’t really win.
Camp NaNoWriMo
By the time July came around, I was working on my first novel. My Save the Cat Beat sheet was ready, but I still didn’t want to commit. I was off work for the summer, so I had time to write more, but the idea stressed me out. I wrote while the kids did their screen time on the back porch with the cat as my writing buddy or sometimes my daughter or son. They are writing novels too.
I wasn’t working toward any specific goal, but every day I pushed to get past 1200 words or maybe 1500. In July, I wrote 26,370 words. I also finished the first draft on August 14th, which means the month of July was a very productive month.
This month, once again, I passed on NaNoWriMo and yet, instead of revising my first novel, I am working on the first draft of a novella. I worked on my beat sheet in October. I started drafting in October too, so maybe there’s a chance I get another completed first draft somewhere near the end of November.
My daughter just signed up
My daughter heard about NaNoWriMo. She liked the writing resources for kids on the website and begged me to let her sign up. Of course I said yes. We got her a log in and set up a dashboard for her writing goals. It asked for her word count goal. She set it for 1,500 words.
The NaNoWriMo resources and dashboard are super cool. I can’t believe I never let myself sign up and join the fun. Seeing my daughter just put down a realistic word count goal and watching the dashboard literally cheer for her as she enters her word count, I feel silly for not joining in at my own pace.
Maybe next time
And yet, I still haven’t signed up. I’m a rule follower. Anything less than 50,000 words just doesn’t feel right. Maybe I’ll do the next Camp NaNoWriMo with a personalized word count goal. Or maybe I will continue to ride in the wake of the NaNoWriMo wave.
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