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You are here: Home / Christina's Thoughts / 10 Lessons I Learned From NaNoWriMo

10 Lessons I Learned From NaNoWriMo

December 1, 2009 By Christina Gleason 3 Comments

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nano_09_winner_120x240If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, you’re obviously not a writer. NaNoWriMo is the shorthand term for National Novel Writing Month, an annual event where aspiring novelists gear up to write an entire 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. It’s something I’d tried doing before, but always ended up dropping out before I’d really gotten started.

This year? I did it. And I feel like a masochist, especially since I started over on November 14. My first attempt had hit a dead end. I reached 50,086 words at 11:39 pm last night with 21 minutes to spare. So what have I learned?

  1. Fiction is hard.
  2. Characters don’t always do what you want them to do.
  3. Knowing how the story ends doesn’t really help you get through the middle any easier.
  4. The built-in thesaurus feature is awesome.
  5. It’s insanely difficult not to edit as you’re writing.
  6. It takes longer to write 1,000 words of fiction than 1,000 words of non-fiction.
  7. Family members need to disappear when it’s writing time.
  8. Asking me “How’s it coming?” when I’m in the middle of typing will make me lose my train of thought – and then get very angry at you.
  9. Writing 5,000 words in a sitting turns your brain to mush.
  10. It feels good to be done!

How about you? If you participated in NaNoWriMo, what did you learn – about writing and about yourself?

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Filed Under: Christina's Thoughts Tagged With: NaNoWriMo, writer

Comments

  1. Lori says

    December 10, 2009 at 8:09 am

    Yea, number 5. Definitely number 5. And number 6. Oh yes, and number 9. But number 10, isn’t that the best? 🙂

    Congratulations, Christina! Having just finished my first NaNo, I understand fully!

Trackbacks

  1. Tweets that mention 10 Lessons I Learned From NaNoWriMo — Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC -- Topsy.com says:
    December 1, 2009 at 11:47 am

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Christina Gleason and Christina Gleason, Christina Gleason. Christina Gleason said: 10 Lessons I Learned from #NaNoWriMo http://kl.am/NaNoWriMoLessons Please RT! […]

  2. NaNoWriMo 2010 Begins Today — Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC says:
    November 1, 2010 at 11:40 am

    […] year was the first year I did it. When I was finished, I posted my list of 10 Things I Learned From NaNoWriMo. I couldn’t believe I finished it, especially since I had just under 5,500 words on November […]

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