{"id":5990,"date":"2012-11-01T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2012-11-01T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=5990"},"modified":"2012-11-01T06:00:42","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T11:00:42","slug":"the-un-nano-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=5990","title":{"rendered":"The Un-NaNo Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the time this gets posted, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) will have begun. But not for me.<\/p>\n

Last year was my second attempt at NaNoWriMo. After failing the first year, I met 2011 with determination and attacked NaNo with gusto. I took a full week off of work at the start. I hit it hard. And by November 30th I had 50,000 words.<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t great words.\u00a0In fact, I had written several scenes by the seat of my pants, unsure where they would fit within the structure of the novel. I had sub-plots that died out. I had characters who remained under-developed. And when I looked back on my story, I realized that several things were happening TO my main character, not BECAUSE of her.<\/p>\n

I wanted to start editing my mess of a zero draft, but first there was Christmas, then one thing, then another.\u00a0The year flew by. The next thing I knew, my friends were talking about NaNoWriMo again.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I got excited! I started to brainstorm, wondering about whether or not I should take a character from an existing short story and try to make him the hero of his own novel. I began to immerse myself in research about the 1920s, and I tried to learn everything I could about the era.<\/p>\n

When I shared my pre-NaNo excitement with my co-worker, Scott<\/a>, he asked me if I was going to finish my novel from last year.<\/p>\n

I hemmed. I hawed. I tried to explain that my unfinished novel needed a lot of work, and I couldn\u2019t very well fix what needed fixing AND write 50,000 additional words. I said I needed to start fresh, to work on a new idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cYou need to finish your book. You can either have one completed story or two half-finished ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott’s not-so-gentle nudge to finish my work smacked me in the face. And that (as Robert Frost once wrote about an untraveled road) made all the difference.<\/p>\n

I decided, I wouldn\u2019t do NaNoWriMo this year.<\/p>\n

A writer has to think about story, pacing, character development, and a thousand other things that fly right out the window when all you care about is hitting a word count.<\/p>\n

So this year, I\u2019m saying \u201cNo\u201d to NaNo. I will still attend the write-ins with the local writers group. I will still take time off from work to focus on my writing the first few days of the month. But I\u2019m not writing toward the NaNo goal of 50,000 words.<\/p>\n

Instead,\u00a0I\u2019ll be editing. I\u2019ll be plotting. And I\u2019ll be developing my characters better. And if (big IF) I get that work done before the end of the month, I\u2019ll write more of the story. I\u2019ll work toward another goal, a harder goal.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll work to finish what I started.<\/p>\n

Note: A longer version of this article appears on my blog,\u00a0The Creativity Well<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the time this gets posted, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) will have begun. But not for me. Last year was my second attempt at NaNoWriMo. After failing the first year, I met 2011 with determination and attacked NaNo with gusto. I took a full week off of work at the start. I hit it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[327,733],"class_list":["post-5990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanowrimo-2","tag-editing","tag-nanowrimo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}