First and finish thoughts on Nanowrimo

Note: I wrote the first part of this entry for Quora.

First writing session- fantastic!

I am not much of a writer. Here on Quora, I mostly do one-pass essays in answer to questions so there isn’t much polish and there are foolish typos.

That latter problem is no problem for Nanowrimo - I try (and mostly fail) to ignore them and keep going.

The problem for me is writing outside of Nanowrimo. On Dec 1, I typically keep going, writing a few hundred words. By Dec 5, it is a single hundred words and I take a break for Christmas that lasts ten months…until the next Nanowrimo comes around.

I have written the full name - the full abbreviation? - several times. From now on, it will be Nano - SEO be damned!

The thing is, after that ten month break, I am ready to go.

This morning, November first, I started writing at 12:00:30 am. And it was beautiful. Not the writing exactly; there were good-enough words and circumlocutions as needed. But the flow of ideas, that was wonderful. That is why I write for Nano. I have ten words written and need to make a decision. I make it and suddenly three hundred words tumble out. Decision time again. Huh, that was a strange choice - let’s keep going. Two hundred more words and now not exactly as my outline beside my computer suggests. Something more is needed here; Fantasy name generators to the rescue and I don’t have to hesitate and think about a cool name that isn’t a letter away from Mithrandir. Three hundred more words. I am stuck briefly. Time to describe the surroundings. Okay, I see a way forward. Now there is a meeting of two people who might not get along. This is a heroic fantasy- will I use a cliched threat-and-size-up-the-opposition meeting or try something new? Thirty seconds later, I am trying something new - not as suspenseful but more real to me.

It is now 1:30 am and I have just over the day’s minimum done. As I lie down, three ideas come to mind and I scribble them down before turning off the light.

I am not much of a writer but I write the hell out of Nano!

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I finished 50,000+ words on Nov 28. 

The last two days, I have written nothing further on the story.

I started the story with five ideas and maybe three or four plot points that I wanted to hit. I would say that most of the writing in the past month was exploring the fantasy world. I created a few different magic systems, the treaties between Dwarves and Humans, a variety of near-deities that live on the world and much of a human kingdom. I did fill out a few plot points but would say that what I made was the world the events would take place in. 

One thing I learned or confirmed, was that when I have a good idea of a specific part of the story, the words pour out wildly fast. I pumped out 2000 good words in an hour and that included a bathroom break. Other days, when I knew I wanted "Keith should learn about XYZ magic here from Feena" but nothing else, those 1,700 words came painfully slowly. Enough pantsing. The next time I work on a story, I will have it better worked out. I already know how surprising things can grow and change during the writing process but my preparation will be greater.

One trivial thing I need is a list of acceptable names. I would again and again have a bit character appear for what I thought was one scene but turn into five and include a few lines of dialog. In first draft style, I simply called these characters "Guard" or "the red-shirted man" But a scene later I felt I had to give him a name. So simple having a list of good names would have been useful.

So I would have been better off with "Lord Selo is one of the bad guys. He rules lands in this area (Map). He had a wife (name) and three children (name, name, name). He has two principle advisors(n, n) and three of his knights are (n, n, n ). Even without giving these characters much in the way of characteristics having their names handy would have helped me organize the plot and my writing.

I need to add about a thousand words of plot to my current story. Then I let it sit until I want to finish it. Then, I think I will go back to my Steampunk story. It is still the most fun and interesting for me and has the more rational plot so far.