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NaNoWriMo Reflection
How it went, what I learnt and where I’m heading from here
It’s December now which means the 2020 NaNoWriMo challenge has concluded. If the term NaNoWriMo means nothing to you, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, an online challenge held in November of every year. Participants aim to write 50000 words of a novel draft over the month.
I attempted it properly for the first time this year. Did I “win” the challenge? Well, I didn’t get to 50000 words so I don’t get the NaNoWriMo helmet badge on my NaNo webpage. At the end of the third week, I had about 37000 words in my draft then I hit a bit of a wall. I kept persisting but my daily word count was a lot less than what I had been completing in the first half of the month. My draft is now at just under 39000 words so about three-quarters of the 50000-word target. In that last week, I started feeling some anxiety about not being able to complete the challenge, coupled with anxiety about what I was writing. Eventually, I made the decision to leave the draft and come back to it in a few months to rework it.
This is a decision that I am ok with for two reasons. Firstly, I put time and effort into planning my ideas, characterisation and plot for this NaNoWriMo, unlike my previous attempt in 2008. Back then, I just went for it and was having fun with it until my plot and…
