NaNoWriMo 2007 - Recap

NaNoWriMo was quite an experience, certainly different than I had expected going in. 50,000 words doesn't sound like much at the beginning, but after a week or so, it might as well have been a million.

In one way, NaNoWriMo is training for the real thing - writing every day and targeting a set quota. It's the ultimate in pressure-cooker, deadline-based writing. And, for my first go-around, I failed miserably, topping out at about 15k words.

My key takeaways from the experience:

- you must write, every day.
- don't expect to make-up any gap between where you should be, word-wise, and where you actually are
- take advantage of the 11 month headstart (NaNo is the same time every year!) and do some planning - outlines, character sketches, etc
- turn off the internal editor and focus completely on word count

The key question is, will I do it again? Yes, most certainly. While challenging and disheartening at points, there's nothing like the rush of working on a novel, and the idea of completing it in a month is intoxicating.