Look, I know it’s almost two weeks since NaNoWriMo ended, but needs must when celebrating the independence of one’s country. So, how did I do on this year’s NaNoWriMo? It’s a mixed bag, honestly.
The first day I managed only 600 words, but after that, I got really disciplined and was making some really good headway to reach my goals. There was a point there when I was almost two days ahead of where I needed to be. And then disaster struck. I got sick. Like sicker than I have been in years and years. Not counting the influenza I had in 2015, it was the sickest that I’d been in a decade. It wasn’t the plague, I got tested. Just a very aggressive common cold. The worst thing about it was that I barely had the time to get better before I went to Barcelona and that meant that I lost two weeks of writing time.
Oh no! How do you feel?
Honestly, I feel pretty good about it. For a while there I had hopes that I would be able to finish this book before Christmas. That would have been really cool. I’m pissed that even though I’ve been living like a hermit for two years, I still got that sick. I am mad at the person who, in the middle of a pandemic, decided to go into the Christmas party my partner went to while sick and get a whole lot of other people sick as well.
I’m writing this on the Saturday before this post comes out and right now, the novel stands at 38 000 words and change. Obviously, I’m not going to be able to get to the about 90 000 words that I’m anticipating by Christmas. My current plan is to try to finish this book on Epiphany, which marks the end of the holiday season here in Finland. Then I can go back to finish the revision of the novel that I wrote for the previous NaNoWriMo. I’ve gotten some great feedback from a couple of friends who read the book and I think I know where I’m heading toward with that one.
What about the other one?
That one, not so much. I had planned for an ending for the book that I’m writing, but I have a feeling that things have shifted enough during transit that that ending no longer works for the book that I’m writing. I am basically discovering the book while I write which is honestly really terrifying and I’m not sure how to deal with that. But I try to keep writing on it to get it where it needs to be.
It’s weird how much my process is still evolving book by book. A lot of advice talks about how it’s essential to find the method that works for you, and how that might shift from book to book, but I still never quite realized just how much that’s true. At least for these past two books it has mostly been good enough to get started and have at least a notion of where I want to be heading. But we’ll see if I actually manage to finish this book by that method.
Did you do NaNoWriMo? How did you do?
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