Last year was my first attempt at NaNoWriMo so I honestly had no idea what to really expect nor did I know how best to prepare, although I’d read numerous handy blog posts with awesome suggestions. I guess that sort of contributed to my eventual dislike of the end product although I did pass the 50k mark, which I was immensely proud of at the time. I suppose in order to post about what I learned from the experience I’ll have to post about what happened, so here’s a little flashback.
Nano 2009 actually very nearly didn’t happen for me, mostly because after having watched and cheered on my friends in 2008 I signed up in December with all the will in the world to try my hand at and own nano 2009. Unfortunately as the months wore on I totally forgot about it and the ideas I’d had, which means that by the time October rolled by I had done absolutely no preparation work… mostly because I didn’t even have an idea. I managed to get some ideas written down and eventually decided on one to work on so that by the time the first of November actually came along I had some characters and something almost resembling an outline to work with.
The first of November quickly rolled by and I began feverishly writing my novel, the excitement of taking part along with my enthusiasm for my plot and characters driving me forward. Then I started suffering the normal symptoms of the nano experience; slowing down, lack of enthusiasm for the plot/characers/writing, not being able to just write. Add to that the fact that I hadn’t yet learned to turn my inner editor off so I was constantly going back and correcting or changing things (much like I’ve been doing with this blog post, lol). As the days wore on I kind of learned to ignore it… but only a little. By week 3 I’d been meeting the daily targets with some ease but, as I had been fearing, I had also gone through the outline that I’d prepared and as I still had about 10k left to do I started to panic instead of, I dunno, sitting down for a bit and noting down possible plots.
I did eventually get to 50k (just) and was super happy but, as mentioned, I never wanted to see it ever again, which is a shame since I started out loving it. I suppose it was naive of me to think that my first ever nano would go smoothly, but it was a bit disappointing, and I only have myself to blame for that, really.
So what have I learned? Well;
Have a plot – Okay, so we all have a plot for nano, but what I mean is have a complete plot. I had a premise and fragments of a plot but didn’t really have an end goal in sight which is why I kept getting stuck or kept writing myself into a corner. I’d mostly banked on just writing short stories as I went along rather than having one plot to be resolved at the end of the novel.
Know your characters – this should probably go without saying, really… In my defence I did know my characters well but didn’t know them well enough to know how they’d react if they were thrown into certain situations or encountered unexpected perils. This meant I couldn’t just throw a random event in and see what happened without getting horrendously stuck.
Preparation is key, mofo – yeah, I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t do nearly enough preparation on my novel. I barely had 2 weeks to get things done and that’s clearly nowhere near enough time to get to know the plot and characters or to let everything develop and grow before the writing started. So this year I’ve started early, I’m doing character sheets (which I should have done last year), having a premise that has a beginning, middle and end, and mapping out character relationships and the like. I’m sure I’ll do more but at least I’m giving myself time to think of things!
Join in on the forums – I’ve been lurking the forums and have realised how fun it probably is to post there. So yes, this year I will post moar. 
Don’t take it so seriously, dude – I took last year waaaaay too seriously. No dares, sprints, adopting subplots/twists for me! I guess eventually without something fresh my plot began to get stagnant in my mind because I was being so SRS about nano and refusing to let anything fun interrupt my SRS writing time… I mean damn, self, it’s meant to be fun. Loosen up and enjoy the experience!
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