Why Failing NaNoWriMo is a Good — Nay, a GREAT Thing! [Bloggin on the etc]
Hulloo, Everyone. I know a lot of people are trying to get pumped up for their best writing year ever right now. I know I was around this time back in 2007, which is when I finally got super-serious about writing my debut novel, 32 CANDLES. So I thought I’d share this pep talk that I wrote for the 2011 NaNoWriMo donors. There’s some good stuff in here about establishing a good writing practice that hopefully even those that didn’t attempt NaNoWriMo last year will be able to use:
Last November, more people than ever completed the NaNoWriMo challenge, got their stars, and are still floating on a euphoria of “having done it,” that still had them pumped when it came time to make their New Year’s Writing Resolutions. That’s just great. Congrats, congrats! … Now let’s talk about the rest of us, the ones that didn’t hit the 50,000 word mark.
Though, I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo last November, I include myself in your ranks, because my debut novel, 32 CANDLES, started out as a 2005 NaNoWriMo challenge. I’d completed all of 5,000 words by the end of the month, and I didn’t end up finishing my rough draft until December… 2007. Yes, it took me over two years just to write the rough draft of my novel. The rough draft! At the time of my original failure, I was thinking pretty much what you’re probably thinking, “I suck, but hey, I’ll be done with this thing by the time the next NaNoWriMo rolls around.” My answer to that … maybe you will. I wasn’t. But maybe you will be.
You see, a lot of people talk about learning from failure. They say, “Don’t be afraid of failure, don’t beat yourself up about it. Learn from it!” But the thing is, they don’t tell you how. I figured out how the hard way and over the course of two years, but I really do think this learning can be condensed into a few simple steps. You could be done with the novel you just didn’t finish by this time next year, if you do the following:
a. Accept that the challenge might have been too challenging. If you have a job and a family and a bunch of other must-dos demanding huge chunks of your time, it’s going to be impossible to knock out 1,700 words a day. If you want to finish your rough draft, the best thing you can do is look at your schedule and figure out a word count that will actually fit within it. Keep in mind that if you write 500 words a day, you’ll still have a 50,000 word rough draft in just a little over three months. That’s not bad at all.
b. Write down a list of all the things that kept you from your 1700 words a day and adjust your writing practice accordingly. You have to take care of your kids, and you have to go to work, and you have to spend quality time with your loved one(s), but are you using the hours that you’re not doing any of these things effectively? If you talked to your mom once a week as opposed to every other day, would you get more writing done? Is it possible to do one quality date night on Friday as opposed to watching hours of TV every night with your boo? Brutally analyze what went wrong, and figure out how to vanquish it. This is the hardest bit. For example, I was in a roller derby league back during by NaNoWriMo failure, and I really, really loved it. But the hours of practice and volunteer work were killing my flow. By April of the following year, I’d made the tough decision to quit. What’s your roller derby?
c. Make a contingency plan for when “stuff” happens. It never fails, just when you really get zooming on a novel, something HAPPENS. Somebody will die, some natural disaster will hit your area, you’ll come down with every flu imaginable—trust, the universe will find a way to blow you off the writing path. During the two years I was trying to finish my novel, our house got robbed, my then-boyfriend asked me to marry him, I got a great-but-really-demanding job. I went from being a starving artist with lots of time on her hands to a busy radio writer who was also trying to plan her wedding. During this time, I came up with my twenty-minutes a day plan. That is, no matter how terrible, how crazy, how busy my day was, I found at least twenty minutes to write. Now that I’m a full-time writer, I still fall back on that twenty minutes a day plan during times of strife. Don’t just consider the possibility of some event throwing you off your writing game, assume it will happen, and plan for it ahead of time. Plan for the worst.
d. Make sure you’re sufficiently motivated. Listen, if you’re going to write something fast and hard, you have to like it on some level. The object of a short, steamy affair has to be attractive to you on a highly passionate level. It has to be a story you’re burning to tell, or it has to have an amazing plot, or your main character has to possess a banging personality. If you started feeling “meh” about your story halfway through the challenge, don’t be afraid to drop it for something sexier.
e. Reverse engineer your perfect writing day. Most people hit their writing goals for this challenge on at least one or two days. Examine the day(s) that you met your goal from all angles. What made this day different? Did you get up earlier? Did you demand that everyone leave you alone for a few hours so that you could write? Did you have an unexpected gift of childcare? Whatever happened on those magical days, figure out how to make it happen again on a more practical level for your everyday practice.
I’m going to leave you with something my OB friend once told me in regards to natural childbirth. She said that it’s not that natural childbirth isn’t possible, it’s that new moms don’t get that giving birth is more like a marathon. Most people train for months to run a marathon, but most first-time moms only take a few classes and maybe read a couple of books to give birth. Barring any major complications, the yogi who has been training herself on how to breathe for years is always going to be more successful at natural childbirth—the mom who just loves the idea of natural childbirth will most likely be calling for an epidural.
Consider your failed 2011 NaNoWriMo challenge the beginning of your training for your 2012 NaNoWriMo marathon. If you work on your writing discipline, and get your writing practice in great shape, you’re going to just kill this year’s challenge. In a way, you’re luckier than the writers that managed to finish NaNoWriMo in 2011 on their first try. They have no failure to learn from and you totally do. Now, go on and get your 2012 star.
Write on,
Ernessa T. Carter
Author, Blogger, Totally Fierce Nerd
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