2nd NaNoWriMo within a year?!

... Naaah, not exactly.

So, for those of you unaware, I participated in JanNoWriMo. This was not an official event, but something that me and other people did on Facebook, just for fun. You set a goal for yourself and throughout the month we were going to try to achieve that. 

Though the month is still not over, I would like to share my results, since Saturday is story-time!

My goal for the month of January was to do the 2nd draft of my current novel.

So I had things going great for me at the start of the month. Had the first 10k down within the first week, which is slower than what I managed in November, but still good. And from there things moved on in a steady pace. However... When I hit about 25k I slowed down. I was scared that I had deleted too much in my revising process and that my novel would end up being less than 50k words long. So I did not feel motivated to write at all.

I felt hopeless and actually had a minor depression. Didn't wanna do anything at all. And having trouble in my Social Science class only made things worse. And I didn't have anyone to turn to. I don't know about you all, but I am not a very touchy-feely person, and I hate sharing how I feel with others. When I have a problem, I like that problem to stay with me. Because of this I felt alone.

Writing is not as easy as some people may think. It takes dedication. And a heck of a lot of it. When you have school, writing classes, a social life and free time writing interferring with each other... things get kind of crazy. 

So for a while I couldn't even rewrite a whole chapter in a day, which was really slow progress for me. However, then something amazing happened to me. I went online and found a website where I found out that some of my favorite authors' books weren't even that long in wordcount terms. If we take Cathy Hopkins as an example; Her series "Mates, dates and..." has 12 books. Some of those books aren't even over 30k words. 

This brought back my desire to write. I thought to myself "If she could get published with that wordcount, so can I. And I'm not even done yet!"

That ended up working out for me, and by now I have a little over 52k on my 2nd draft. What does this mean? Well it means that I basically did my 2nd NaNoWriMo within a year. My 2nd draft is still not done, and I think it will be around 60-80k words... maybe 75k. Something like that. 

Now this wasn't as dificult to achieve as the goal in November, since I already had everything written down this time around and all I really had to do was type it into the computer. But that process was way more time consuming than I expected when I set the goal for myself.

I can't wait for this draft to be done. Then all I need to do is read it through, send it off to beta-readers, get their feedback, imply their feedback and then send it off. I don't even care if I get rejected. All I care is to know that I have what it takes to put this much work in one project. And I am proud of myself for that.

Keep Calm and Write on.

- Nanna

Words...

Are just that... words.

NaNoWriMo day #28 - wordgoal: 46666 -

Now the thing is; Since I finished my novel, I do not keep track of what I do each day of the month... Yes, I actually did that. But I know I was still working on revising chapter 2, so yeah. That happened. What have you been up to? Writing? I hope so. Because only two days remain.

NaNoWriMo day #29 - wordgoal: 48333 -

We are nearing the end. Only one day until the finale. Even though I finished my novel nine days ago, I can still feel the butterflies in my stomach. It's like I can feel the excitment from everyone who is still getting to 50k. Oh on that note; Editing is going great. I finally finished revisions on chapter 2 and started on chapter 3. Chapter two took a little longer than I hoped it would, but that's okay. It is my first time every revising a novel, so of course it is going to be a struggle. I am still having fun with it though, so I got that going for me.

NaNoWriMo day #30 - wordgoal: 50000 -

WE DID IT! Confetti and champaign for everyone! I know I have been real hard on you throughout this month. I yelled at you a couple of times, but that was only because I wanted you to succeed. And even though I have been saying how important it is to hit the 50k mark... it really isn't. Whether you hit 50k, 30k or 168 words... you still did something that a lot of people fear. You wrote. You sat down and wrote. Starting something new is scary. But the only way of getting ahead is getting started. If you did NaNo, in some way or another, you started. If it wasn't for NaNo I don't think I would have been able to start my novel. Having this end goal of 50k words and...the graf...ohhh the graf... it motivates me to write. That is why I keep doing it. This has only been my second year doing (and winning) NaNo, but I am going to keep at it. It is an amazing project that challenge people to take quantity over quality. That is pretty damn hard. We are forced to keep going and finish the project before we are allowed to edit and perfect.

Now, writing is what I want to do for a living, I literally can't go a day without working on my novel. And even if I don't see the shadow of NaNo until the summer camps, I will still be writing. I finished editing chapter 3 and that means there is only 22 chapters to go before I can work on my 2nd draft. It is going to take a lot of hard work, but in the end I know it will be worth it.

The real journey starts now. I hope you will join me. Until we see each other again;

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna. 

Why I love revision...

You know what is really weird? Sitting alone at your friend's house, while she is out working. Whatever! I am just gonna chill with her dog!

NaNoWriMo day #24 - wordgoal 40000 - 

The big 40k! You are almost there! Only 10k more to go. That isn't so bad now is it? I mean, you have come all this way... why stop now? Because you can't. You just can't! I will not allow it. Write that novel. Finish it. And then throw it in the trash on December 1st! I won't judge you! But I will be disappointed if you stop now that we are so close to the finish line... hey! Even if you haven't started yet, you can still win. All you need to do is write 8333 words a day! It can be done!

I managed to read through... five...or six chapters of my first draft! It actually is not as bad as I thought. I mean, there is still a lot to edit, but it is readable.

NaNoWriMo day #25 - wordgoal: 41667 - 

VALIDATION DAY! Yes! the 25th is the day when you can officially validate your wordcount! But that is not the most exciting part! It is the awesome PURPLE bar and all the winner's badges! Let me share some of them with you! 

Just look at how pretty that is! I am a winner! I also got my winner's certificate, but I won't show that. Yeah I am annoying. I know.

On the progress of my novel... I decided that is was not necessary to read through all the chapters. All I needed to do was look them over and write a short synopsis for each. So I did. I wrote the final synopisis, and decided that on Tuesday I would print out my first chapter and work on that!

NaNoWriMo day #26 - wordgoal: 43333 -

I printed out the first chapter of my novel! Wauw... it really is different to hold it in a printed format... but it is even crazier how much I was able to edit! Every page is covered by yellow markings where stuff needs to be changed. I know Stephen King said in "On writing" that you need to cut 10% away, but I never imagined it would be so easy! I am deleting way more than I thought, and that is just by changing sentences. On top of that I went to my writing class and we had a substitute teacher (also an author) and she read through my 1st chapter... she could not put it down! She did give me some really good advice, but I could really feel how she believed in my writing. Aslo; she is really good friends with the man I look up to the most, Kenneth Bøgh Andersen (a danish author) and she said, that she would tell him, how much of an inspiration he has been to me... that is just awesome!

NaNoWriMo day #27 - wordgoal: 45000 - 

Less than 5k! Just a little more!

So I printed out chapter 2 today. I managed to finish my notes for chapter 1 yesterday... I ended up with 62 footnotes...and that is not even everything. I also deleted a lot of stuff. But while editing the first chapter I found out, that my favorite part of writing a book is the editing process. I love to outline, I love to write...but I am IN LOVE with polishing. What NaNoWriMo is about is quantity. Revision is about taking that 'quantity' and turn it into 'quality'. That is why I love revising. I actually sat for an hour with chapter 2 today, and I only managed to take notes to two pages! I sat for so long just wondering how to phrase certain sentences! It was awesome! And I can't wait to edit more after writing this!

Just for fun I am going to show you a random yellow marked page of chapter 1... just so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

All the yellow is stuff that needs to be changed... yeah... pretty much all my pages look like that, but it is okay. My story is moving forward, and so should yours be!

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.