So, NaNoWriMo is over. And I completed it. It took me just 21 days and I wrote a novel. I’m still in a state of disbelief that I did it. I finished it. I had had two miserable failures before so there was this niggling fear it would be too much for me to take on. Or that I really wouldn’t enjoy it and it would feel like another job.

FALSE.

A) It was a breeze to complete
B) I never had trouble finding time during the day to write. I only woke up early twice for the specific purpose of writing and never was up late to finish my daily word count.
C) I had SO MUCH FUN with it. I never realized how much pure joy and pleasure I derive from writing.

I thought for today I would share some lessons I learned during my journey to 50,000 words:

Writing comes naturally to me. I think there were maybe two days where it was a struggle to get the words down. (And this was mainly because I was also watching TV while writing. I am someone who needs complete silence to write.) I didn’t succumb to any type of writer’s block and the words flowed well. It helps that I knew I was writing this story for fun and it was my first novel so the pressure to write anything life-changing was off. I don’t think it’s one I’ll want to edit and try to get published. So I wrote for the specific purpose of just getting the words down and writing a novel. I wrote without an outline and it felt natural and true and right.

I need to outline. Yeah, so I wrote an entire post on writing without an outline and how I liked the process of it in early November. Remember? Which I think was fine for the purposes of this novel. For the type of novels I want to write, they need to be around 100,000 words so I know I’ll need to outline the plot much more deeply so the character development happens more naturally. I think it will give me a more focused plot and conflict, as well.

I need to do more writing exercises. You know the ones I’m talking about. All those mundane writing exercises you had to do in high school English or college-level composition classes. The ones that seemed pointless and ridiculous. I never much liked them, really. They always seemed to be busy work and not a real reflection on the writing process. Well, folks, I’m here to tell you that your English teacher is not off her rocker. There is a reason for these writing exercises and they force you to take a good look at your surroundings and write about all those little details you otherwise miss. I plan on taking next year to read through One Year to Writing Life and gaining a better appreciation of writing and prose.

I take more mental pictures. I’ve found myself more deeply appreciative of nature and my surroundings. I’m studying the sky at different times of the day to memorize the colors and the way the clouds lay. I’m doing more people-watching and eavesdropping on conversations and studying their nuances. One of my weaknesses in writing is scenery because it’s something I tend to skim when I’m reading novels myself. But I also know it helps readers to picture the story and the scene in their mind and it’s something I need to hone. I find myself more aware of where I am and what’s in front of me and what I hear and how I feel. All my senses are alive and I want to capture that and do more sensory writing activities.

I won’t write unless I make myself. Well, duh. Knowing I had a deadline of writing 50,000 words in 30 days lit a fire in me to sit down every day, usually for an hour to an hour and a half, and hammer out 2,000 words. I work better under pressure, better under looming deadlines. Without them, I don’t know what to do with myself. I go months and months and months without writing anything. With my blog, I have put myself under a deadline of writing 3 posts a week. Using Google Calendar, I spend a few minutes at the beginning of every month creating a tentative blogging schedule and it keeps me focused on what I want to write about and since I’m a stickler for routine, it helps me keep my M/W/F schedule. I need that same schedule when it comes to my fiction writing. I need deadlines and word counts and routines. I want NaNo 2012 to be the turning point in my fiction writing, I don’t want it to stop here.

This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I enjoyed the process of writing so much. I know I’ve said it before but I was always a bit fearful of the actual writing process. I just loved creating plots and characters, writing backgrounds and daydreaming. I am a major research nerd and the research part of writing thrills me. With the story I wrote for NaNo, I went in with a vague idea of a plot and characters. I know my novel will showcase some inconsistencies based on the fact I didn’t use an outline or research anything at all. I just wanted to write the novel and what I discovered was how much I love writing. Pure love. And one day I will do this for a living.

It is Day 5 of NaNoWriMo. I am 8,201 words into my story. I am 1,533 words above where I should be now and I am shooting to be at 10,300 words by the end of today. So far, NaNoWriMo is going amazingly. I am at the point where I am sure I can win this and learning to let go of expectations and the editing gene that’s in me to just get words on paper.

Up until October 31, I had a completely different story in mind. A fun little romance just to get my feet wet in the process of writing. I wanted to keep it easy, something I could write about without too many issues. And then I realized I had to write the story that has been brewing in my head for years. A coming-of-age story that borrows from a lot of my experience during my first year at USF. I spent the last day of October, furiously writing down a semblance of a backstory with characters in mind to give my main character more depth. No outline. No research. And I’m getting to know my character as I write her. And while I keep toying with the idea of changing my story completely (my mistake on my last attempt at NaNoWriMo), I push away those thoughts and focus on this story. (I have given myself permission to outline the other story brewing in my head once I complete my word count for the day, though.) At this point, it’s really too late to change to a different story and still make the 50,000 word count. (Unless I spend all my weekends writing!)

My life has begun revolving around meeting my daily word count. I carve out time every day to sit down and just write. It usually doesn’t take me more than an hour and I write in 15-minute increments. I set the timer, write furiously, and then give myself a 5-minute break to get up and stretch, read a blog, anything to take my mind off my story for a bit. Then I’m back at it for another 15 minutes. This process is working for me because I’m not the type that can just sit down and hammer out 2,000 words in one sitting. I don’t operate that way. (Yet!) I’m just crossing my fingers that I can keep up with this pace, although the further I get into my story, the further problems may arise which is why I’m trying to be above my word count to help me when that comes.

I was never the type of writer who liked to work without an outline. Even for my school papers, I would usually lay out some type of plan to figure out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. A few years ago, I was reading a blog of a published YA novelist who got her first book deal at the age of 22 (!) and has since then published a plethora of novels. She talked about how she doesn’t use outlines. They don’t work for her. The process of just sitting down at the computer each day and figuring out the story as she went along was easier than adhering to an outline. She said when she sat down to write her first novel, she didn’t even know that her main character was going to end up with the guy she fell in love with!

And I loved that.

I loved how she just wrote. Figured things out organically. I think there’s always this broad idea we have in our heads of what we want to say but there’s a certain magic that happens when we just write like we are a reader, finding things out as we go.

The story I’m writing for NaNo doesn’t have an outline. I have a broad idea of what I want to happen throughout the novel, but not piece by piece. I want to figure out each piece as I write and it seems to be coming together that way. There are things happening to my main character that I didn’t expect, situations arising that I didn’t plan for. Sometimes, it feels a bit chaotic to just write without a plan but it’s all coming together somehow.

I wanted to do NaNoWriMo to show myself I could complete it and to establish a daily writing habit for myself. It’s become so easy for me to set aside my fiction and this is the first time since last NaNoWriMo (where I wrote for less than a week!) that I’ve done so much writing at one time. If my biggest dream for my life is to be an author, I have to be an author. I have to stop dreaming about it and planning for it and just sit down and do it. Daily.