I don’t know about you, but my November whizzed by so fast I’m still trying to figure out where it went. Originally, I intended to blog about how things were going with NaNoWriMo but… *laughs* Yeah, obviously that didn’t happen.

Ah, well, better late than never. This’ll be the first part of my NaNoWriMo 2011 After-Action Report.

Participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time was an experience. I learned so much about my own capabilities and the writing process in general over the course of the month. NaNo is about having fun writing and stretching limits. (More on that later.)

Successfully completing the challenge was also an experience. The surge of relief and exhilaration that swept through me when my word counter declared I’d passed the 50,000 word mark sent me dancing around the house like a nut. My family, well-accustomed to this sort of behavior, just laughed and shook their heads. (As I’ve learned, the 50,000 word victory dance is quite common among the NaNoWriMo crowd.)

To begin, a little background.

As I mentioned in October, the idea for this particular project hit me in July. Unlike most of my other projects (with the exception of Portal Woes), I had a title from the start: The Other Side of the Horizon. It will be a stand-alone science fiction novel…with a twist. (More on that later as well.)

Over the next few months while I was finishing up Portal Woes and publishing, TOSOTH bounced around my head like a small dog begging for attention. In order to preserve my sanity, I jotted down notes, scene/plot/character ideas, and other assorted details to keep this story muse temporarily at bay.

In October, I decided I’d give NaNo a shot and TOSOTH would be my new project (since it was still running rampant inside my head). In between drafting new sections for the beginning of Portal Woes, I spent a lot of time preparing material for TOSOTH. This involved asking myself (and answering) dozens of questions about various aspects of the book as well as naming characters and fleshing them out, jotting down descriptions of various places, and a host of other things.

Remember, I’m a reformed seat-of-my-pants writer. 🙂 I did create an outline of the plot, but it was mainly the highlights of important things that need to happen. More details get filled in as I go—as characters take on life, they often influence things in different directions than I’d expected at the beginning.

That’s actually one of the things I enjoy the most about writing fiction. For me, anyway, it’s a fairly organic process. I start with a premise (and/or a main character or a scene) and the story grows from there. Most of the little scenes and events that connect major plot points B are aha! moments when pieces just fall into place. It’s so much fun.

By the time November 1 rolled around, I was itching to put fingers to keyboard and start typing. Since I already have a writing schedule, I didn’t have that initial when-am-I-going-to-find-time-to-write panic attack that I’ve heard about. I did, however, have to recalculate my daily word count.

The per-day NaNo word count goal is 1667 words. I don’t work on Sundays and I don’t usually end up having time to write on Saturdays, so the bulk of my writing is generally done Monday-Friday. That meant I needed to produce about 2200 words a day to keep up with the par weekly word count. After Day 1, I decided I’d bump that up to 2500 words a day to give myself a bit of a buffer. (Plus, I was really having fun.)

You know what I rediscovered? Knowing my characters and the setting and having a general idea of where things were headed meant that I blazed through the first two weeks of NaNo, even though we had a lot going on at home. In fact, writing was going so well that I went ahead and bumped my word count up to 3000 just to see if I could consistently manage that much per day. And, for the most part, I was able to keep it up.

NaNoWriMo sends you weekly pep talks throughout November. Some of them are written by staff members and others are contributed by authors like Brandon Sanderson. The one Lindsey Grant wrote for Week 2 talked about overcoming the second week slump. For me, that slump didn’t come until the end of Week 3.

Part of that slump was because I switched settings and moved to another segment of the plot that required naming/fleshing out new characters. Another part was the fact that my mom and one of my sisters were out of town for almost a week and I was responsible for cooking dinner for the remaining seven of us. I love cooking, don’t get me wrong, but everything seemed to take twice as long as usual to prepare that week.

Week 4 I spent bouncing from below par to above par.  I loved seeing my progress bar fill up, but every day I didn’t make my quota made me a little panicky.  The start of Day 28, I had just under 7000 words left to write.

Those last three days were  the hardest.

I think it was mostly because I’d reached the end of this particular section of the plot and was preparing to move on to the next, which involved fleshing out more characters and nailing down final details for the next setting. None of it would have been a problem at any other time, but I was feeling the pressure and figuring those things out took time out of my writing allotment.

Everyone who signs up for NaNoWriMo gets a graph on their profile showing when and how much they write over the month. A glance at my graph shows me what sections of the month really got crazy–my productivity took a bigger hit than usual over the weekends the last half of the month. (Surprisingly, I had a great writing day on Black Friday, but the first three Fridays of the month were a bust.)

Despite everything, at 6 PM on Day 30, I validated my word count and watched my word counter turn purple (to denote a win). Rejoicing and dancing ensued. 😀

TOSOTH’s rough draft may have reached 50,000 words, but the story’s not finished yet. In the next post, I’ll talk about what I learned from NaNo and the unexpected twist TOSOTH took.

 ——

Bad Faith, the first book in my sci-fi series, The Guardians, is now available. You can get a physical copy through either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Sample chapters are available from all ebook providers, or you can read the first three chapters here.

For the Kindle copy, please use this link.

To purchase it through Barnes & Noble for your Nook, please use this link.

To purchase it through iTunes for your iPad/iPhone/iPod, just hit this link.