Will I Do NaNoWriMo Again?

Forgive me one more post on NaNoWriMo. Now that it’s over, I’ve been asking myself whether I should do it again some year. Although there are some NaNoWriMo groupies who do it every year, I don’t think I’m one of them. In fact, I’m not sure I will ever participate again.

One reason I don’t think I’ll do it again is that it was easier than I thought to write 50,000 words in a month. So easy, in fact, that my real question for myself is why I don’t always write that fast.

Rather than pushing myself to complete a full draft of a novel in a month, I think my writing process would be better served by doing an even more complete outline of the story than I did on this book, then setting myself a target of completing the first draft quickly, but not under any time pressure. I think I would be better off filling in some of the gaps I left in this past month’s writing sprint.

Of course, being part of the NaNoWriMo group was helpful in some respects. The camaraderie of other writers was motivating. On the Tuesday evenings when the Mid-Continent Public Library’s Story Center held virtual write-ins, my word count shot up. That 45 minutes or so of dedicated writing, knowing that other writers were doing the same thing, was encouraging. I’d gone into the month pooh-poohing the idea of write-ins, but I’m a convert now—I hit about 5000 words total during the three write-ins.

And I was helped also by cutting back on my blog posts in November. I had placeholders posts drafted before the month began, and I only had to update them at the last minute to record and comment on my NaNoWriMo progress. I typically write eight to ten blog posts a month, and each one takes an average of two hours. That’s at least 16 hours a month, in which I could write about 25,000 words (at my NaNoWriMo pace), or a quarter of a novel.

What that says is that about a third of my writing during the month was due to extra time writing during the write-ins and cutting back on my blog posts. Still, that means I should easily be able to write 50-60,000 words during a month.

That is also confirmed by the fact that the rest of my life didn’t change much during NaNoWriMo while I wrote the 95,000 words. My husband did a few extra loads of laundry. I did fewer crossword and sudoku puzzles. I gave myself permission to write less in my journal than I usually do (but I still wrote every day). I kept up with all my regular obligations. AND I bought most of the Christmas gifts I’ll be buying for my family this year. So 50,000 words a month on a new draft—provided I have a decent outline—should be eminently doable.

So why wouldn’t I do NaNoWriMo again? Because I’d rather put what I learned from the month into my writing on an ongoing basis. Every novel should be drafted more quickly than my past process. I’ve always considered a six-month first draft to be a fairly good pace for me, though I know many writers writer more quickly than that. Now, I’ll have to up the ante.

But ask me all this again after I’ve gone through the first major edit of the novel I just drafted. Was writing a first draft quickly really a good thing? Only the second draft will tell.

Writers, how has your process changed as you’ve gained experience?