This year was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo, and I surprised myself a bit by winning it! Granted, the night of 11/30/2021 saw me write ~7300 words (a new personal best, that I don't know if I regularly want to repeat or not...)
I did finish off with a little over 51000 words, and am still kind of surprised and proud that I set out to do the thing and then DID it... in the timeframe specified.
There was one single night that I didn't write, after a particularly rough 12hr shift that turned into closer to a 14hr shift... but every other night in November I wrote my words.
I think that deciding to go to the 20 Books to 50K conference in Las Vegas this year was a significantly contributing factor to my success. Yeah, it was hard making myself write before bed every night, but just being surrounded by hundreds of other Indie authors and Indie authors-to-be was one of the best things I have done for myself. Aside from the dozens of amazing presenters, just being around folks that are just as weird as I am was such a beautiful thing. I have rarely felt so supported and inspired by a bunch of folks I've never met before. If you are an Indie author or writer, I cannot recommend this conference highly enough! It's happening again in 2022, and I hope I'll see you there!
I haven't done much writing since the mad dash to the finish line on 11/30/2021, but I have been doing some reflecting on what went well this year and what I'll want to do differently for NaNo 2022.
The biggest thing I took away was how much easier it was for me to stay on track with my storyline when I had at least a vague outline to work from. Prior to this experiment, I have been a diehard pantser. No plotting, no way, no how. With my foray into the plotting realm, however, I've come to realize that I'm more of a plantser... I need a brief outline to keep my squirrels all herded in the same direction, but I need it to be flexible enough to encompass those flashes of insight or creativity that can appear without warning.
So... the plan for now is to finish plotting my story so that I can finish plantsing the writing of it. Tell me, though... how are things in your little corner of the aether? What kinds of fun, creative shenanigans are you up to?
xoxo,
A.R. Lewis
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