NaNoWriMo 2012 Winner!

So again, like every year since I was eleven, I decided to take on the challenge of National Novel Writing Month. Some years I've had a head start, like this year, some years I've tailed off on day three, some years I've gotten to day ten and I'm behind but I'm still going. Last year I managed to get up to 20,000 words no problem, but the thing was I hated what I was writing, had no proper plan and all in all I found what I was writing to be the most boring thing. If I find it boring to write, they'll find it boring to read.

So that got scrapped. I could have started again; but I didn't. And that gave me the new found determination I harnessed this year for winning. I knew I could do twenty thousand: what was to stop me from doing thirty thousand? Or another twenty thousand after that? That would bring me up to the target goal of 50,000 words. And I was going to do it. And I did. This morning at 02:11 I finally won NaNoWriMo after years of trying and failing. And it feels so damn good.

No, not good. Great. Brilliant. Fabulous. I feel as though I should have balloons and streamers all around me celebrating my success. There are only a handful of people who know how much this means to me; but even then I don't think they understand just how pleased I am with myself. Because I didn't just reach the word goal - I reached it in twelve days. I know it's Nov. 14th, but I didn't write for two days of that to give myself a break. That is less than half the time allotted for the whole month to reach the goal.

In the midst of this I've had a hectic social life, friends demanding to see me and having nothing more than my plan and my writing software (Yarny, thank you so much) when I'm at my boyfriend's, started work, and am in the middle of moving house. If I can write 50,000 words in twelve days with all that going on I know I can do it any other time of the year and do so much more at quieter times in my life. I was determined to do it this year since I had no educational commitments, no other deadlines apart from the ones which are self-imposed, no appointments other than the ones I make; and work really doesn't take up that much of my time.

I worked out that if I continued to write the target word goal for each day (1,666) then I would end up with over another 28,000. That's 78,000. Almost 80,000. Almost a novel. And that makes me grin with pleasure and pride at myself. The only problem was once I hit 40,000 I realized I would only have enough story left planned out for another 10,000. Perhaps once I go back and edit it and flesh things out properly and add scenes in, I can bump the word count up. But I'm not touching it for another good month or two, because I'm entirely burned out. I don't want to read what I've written because I know most of it will be utter tripe. But I know there will be some gems in there, and if I can cut the rest to be just as beautiful and then shine it all up, I'll be all the more triumphant.

So I always learn things from NaNo. I've learned that I can be motivated off my own back, and when I am, I easily reach my targets. And then I have extra time. So instead of taking a break and relaxing, I'm very productive if I push myself through all that extra time I have and continue to work. It's easy for me to be lazy; but I found out it's equally as easy for me to just get on with things and get on with them well and over achieve. I had forgotten what over achieving feels like, having small successes in the past year but none I'm amazed at myself with.

I've also learned that I'm quite competitive. Looking at my online buddies list helped me to aim for a higher word count than I needed for each day. I wanted to be ahead of everyone else on there. If someone was at 40k and I was sat at 35k, I wasn't going to stop until I'd matched or beaten them. And that worked.

I've learned I'm not a pantser, I'm a planner. I couldn't have gotten ahead in the game so quickly if I hadn't written out quite a detailed plan for the first 25k of what I wrote, and after that I still had some vague guidelines of what had to happen in the next 25k before I could finish. I learned that the twenties are easy, but the thirties are hard and then when you thought that was a slog; the last 10k is possibly the hardest you've ever written.

I learned what is boring for me to write is probably boring to read. Driving and walking are two of these things. And unfortunately my characters go through a lot of that.

I learned my protagonist is not the male, but instead, the female. I found myself writing things more from her perspective.

I learned when I write every day, even when I don't want to, on the days when I do I see how much I've written and it motivates me even more because I know I can do better than the days when I didn't really feel like it. I learned writing every day takes a while to get into the hang of, and writing too much can burn you out, but if you take little steps and do some every day, it helps immensely and even if you don't think you have time for it, you find time. In those little spare moments you gain.

I learned it's worth it. I learned I probably won't want to do it again next year unless I have a solid idea. I learned that NaNo is not as shit as I thought it was.

I learned I can do it.