What I Learned from Last Year's NaNoWriMo

Pyte was my project for last year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, in which participants try to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days). It was quite an experience. Here's what I learned:

1. 50,000 words in 30 days, or 1,667 words a day, sounds like a lot but isn't. It's really not very hard to produce that much first-draft fiction, on topic and following the plot plan, every day for a month.
2. The advice I see all over the place: 'Just write! Do your editing later,' isn't for everyone. I 'just wrote' for 30 days nearly a year ago (NaNoWriMo happens for the month of November every year.), and managed to turn out a manuscript that looks suspiciously like an elephant-sized knot of badly-tangled string. I've only recently screwed up the courage to start fixing it. This year I'm going to edit as I go along. I'm sure my wordcount graph will look like the Dow, but I think the idea is to actually produce something readable.



In Pyte, Piper Provencher is rescued after
nearly dying from exposure in a black-rock
desert. Photo: livejournal.com

3. You get to meet fabulous people. I frequent other social sites for writers, and mostly I meet people who fancy themselves writers but aren't. Maybe there's just a bigger pool of members to choose from, but NaNoWriMo has been a great place to connect with people who understand me as a writer and help me out with great feedback and advice. 

Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo? What was your experience like?

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