Lessons Learned from NaNoWriMo

by Sukie Juhan

I feel like a sell-out every Monday through Friday for the nine plus hours I work in my corporate job. This is especially true when I am too tired or unmotivated to write in the evenings because of work stress. A few months ago I found a way to feel like a successful writer for a change.

In November 2004 I signed up for a writing marathon; it is called NaNoWriMo and the acronym stands for National Novel Writing Month. In a nutshell, it is a month-long writing contest where the objective is to write a 50,000-word first draft of a novel. There are no fabulous prizes for completing this marathon but I did feel like a winner because I finally finished the first draft of my novel.

In late October my curiosity was piqued by a post on the Seattle Writergrrls list serve about NaNoWriMo. I checked out the website: www.nanowrimo.org and was intrigued by the possibility. I found out that the founder of the organization, Chris Baty, had written a book called No Plot? No Problem!, and he would be promoting it at the University Bookstore. So, I attended his reading a week before the marathon would begin.

Chris was a great speaker, and made it seem possible to complete a novel in a month. I picked up his book and spent a few days reading the first chapters to prepare for the hard work ahead. I chose to use characters and a storyline from a novel that I had been struggling with for five long years. In its current form, the novel consisted only of a couple of chapters. Additionally I had lots of character sketches and many journal ramblings that began with: Where is my novel going?

NaNoWriMo frowns upon participants working from something already started; yet I took my character development and vague plot ideas, and started the whole thing over. (I was not ready to let go of this story even if it meant bending the rules.)

In the first couple of days of November, I was ahead of the game and feeling confident that I might pull this off. I worked on a journal entry each night before plunging into the novel. At the end of the week, after a few struggles, I managed to complete the first 10,000 words.

In his book, Chris warns that the second week of the marathon can be a motivation killer, and many participants give up in that especially tough time. I came pretty close. But somehow I managed to pull through the second week, and I wrote 17,000 words. It was not close to the halfway point in terms of word count, but it was more than I had ever written.

Week three, according to Chris, can be a great week, when words flow easily and word counts begin to soar. That was not the case for me, but I did not give up. With each session I moved closer to the goal and learned a little more about the process of writing.

In week four I had a few extra days, but I also needed to write about 21,000 more words! In that week the story evolved and became more interesting and I enjoyed the process, even though I was stressed out about the ticking of time.

Somehow I managed to finish the 50,000 words. In the final few hours, I added scenes and tried to flesh-out what I already had. Note my final journal post:

I DID IT!!! At 12:01am I was typing "The End" and by then I had already reached the writing goal (50,161 total) ... how crazy this is and how happy I am to have completed it.

At the end of December, after a much-needed break, I printed the eighty-two page document and read it. While many parts made me cringe, there were some scenes, paragraphs, and sentences that I was proud of. There were plot holes and characters needing to be fleshed out, so I still had a lot of work ahead in the rewrite. The completed novel will probably look much different from the NaNoWriMo final draft, but it is easier to edit something that exists even in its infantile stage.

So what have I learned from the experience?

I have learned to silence my internal editor and write. I have learned that I have discipline—even if sometimes it must be dragged out of me. I have learned that I can complete a story—not just start one. I have learned that a shitty first draft is a necessary phase to develop complete characters and create a story. It is scary to dive in before the characters are ready, and before the story is worked out, but diving in is what leads to a completed novel. Ultimately I have learned how to write a novel. Below are some excerpts from my journal—I had heard these writing tips before, but only in the process did I really understand them.

• I have figured out that the theme is something that comes naturally through the telling of the story. It can almost be too contrived if the writer has a full theme ready before even sitting down to write—then you are trying to mold the story to the theme.
• I want to put my trust in the characters and let them tell the story; I don't want to pigeonhole them too much.
• I am forced to make choices quickly and without much thought. I think this exercise has taught me to act more spontaneously with my writing.

It was a great experience that I would recommend to any writer. At the very least I felt like a real writer for that month. I have learned that to be a successful writer, I must find time to write despite everything else in my life. Who knows? Maybe one day I can quit my sell-out job and become a best-selling writer.

Sukie Juhan recently moved to Seattle. She is aspiring to one day be a full-time writer and possibly a librarian.