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Daniel Gorman

Nanowrimo Prep: Another Nanowrimo


I first attempted Nanowrimo way back in 2011, according to my Nanowrimo profile. For those of you who are not aware, "Nanowrimo" stands for "National Novel Writing Month", an event where, during the month of November, writers attempt to churn out 50,000 words, or what would amount to a short novel. The title of my first story was, "Scraps" and was labeled as "satire/comedy". I'm assuming it was autobiographical in some respects, because that was the nickname I had when I was playing kickball with my sister, for dubious reasons that I won't get into but were completely unearned, I'd like to add to the record. I managed that first year to write a whopping 863 total words before giving it up. The following year I didn't even get that far, only completing the title, which was simply "A Title". Zero words that year. Then the next year, this would be 2013, I made my first real go at it, putting up 31,000 words in a valiant but failing effort. The story I wrote was based on a D&D game that my friends and I had played, and so I had a lot of source material to draw from. I just ran out of plot, or ran out of steam, I'm not sure which. I looked back on that story recently, and I'm not displeased with some of the writing. I just didn't have the ability to generate words at an appropriate rate. Not yet.

Then in 2014 a few things happened. First, I had an idea for a story. This was the most fully formed idea I'd had at the time, and it came with a great deal of enthusiasm. Anyone who has ever attempted to write anything understands how important enthusiasm is when you're trying to write. The other thing that happened was I had a plan. My brush with the possibility of success the previous year opened my eyes to the potential of being able to complete this competition. I hadn't done it, but I'd done pretty well, and I certainly had written more than I'd ever done before. I knew that I could do it, if I made the effort to prepare myself beforehand. So when the summer of 2014 rolled around, I was already outlining, creating characters and settings, and making writing plans for November. When November rolled around, I not only completed Nanowrimo, I did it with ease. I had so much plot planned out that I ended up continuing beyond November and completed the novel in January, finishing with over 125,000 words. I have been finishing Nanowrimos ever since.


Now I can crank out 50,000 words with ease, with or without prep work. One year I completed Nanowrimo without any plan at all, without even an idea of what I would be writing about, just to see if I could do it. That's not to say that any of what I'm writing is good; I have adopted the hard and fast rule that Nanowrimo is about quantity, not quality, and much of what I write during those thirty days is garbage. But I learned that first year what I was capable of, I crossed a threshold that had previously seemed unattainable, and in so doing gave myself an enormous amount of confidence. When I finished my sixth Nanowrimo last year, I jokingly wrote that I would go for 75,000 words my next attempt. I decided to go for it. But first, I need to train.


So this year, I'm going to be doing two Nanowrimos. October will be Nano Prep Month, where I prepare for 75k by knocking out 50k as a warm-up. I'm going to run a marathon in preparation to run a marathon-and-a-half. Come November 1st, my writing muscles should all be primed and stretched, loose and accustomed to the daily grind of churning out words. It is probably an unnecessary challenge to give myself - I feel like as long as I gave myself enough time every day I would be able to hit 75k without a month of writing beforehand, and in fact the writing in October may burn me out quicker, but I also want to do this. I want to see what effect this much writing will have on my other writing, if I get better, or if I get burned out. I don't know, I guess we will just have to see. All I know is, I'm excited for the challenge, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

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