What have we learned and gained through NaNo this year?

Meeresbande

In my time-zone (middle Europe) NaNo just finished.
I managed just over 24,000 words (about 4,000 of them just today, after not having been able to write for the last week or so) and
I'm totally proud of myself!
I will be even more proud, probably, tomorrow, when I'm not so tired anymore. :)
I wish I could share my novel-draft with you (it's not even halfway done yet, but still), but it's in german, so I fear not many people here will be able to read it.

Anyways, what have I learned and gained through NaNo this year?
It was my first NaNo, my first novel ever and it gave me so much. Now I know that I am a great writer, I have not only the potential, intelligence, imagination and stories inside me, I have also the ability to sit down and write! There are things I have to say, stories to tell, worlds to build and share with the world and it doesn't have to stay a dream or some endeavor for a misty future where I will one day write all those novels. No, I can write now. And I do.
Even though I have been and still am really ill and life has totally sucked this month with being kicked out of my home (I have two weeks left now until I have to move out), worrying about the most important person in my life and being unable to visit him for most of the worrying and my social net missing some important links just when I'd need them most - still I wrote 24,000 words in this month! And some of these words are even really good.
This may sound crazy (and it's perfectly possible that NaNo has eaten my brain, too, but who needs sanity), but I'm actually looking forward to sort-of-revising what I've written so far and then completing the first draft of this magnifiscent novel. And then revising some more :)

Yes, I'm proud of myself!

Jenni

Yay Meeresbende! Congratulations. That's amazing! I hope that the rest sorts itself out soon.

This was my first year attempting NaNo as well, and I have found it to be an amazing month, and inspiring to see just how much I can actually do in a month. Yay to all of us who valiantly attempted! We're all winners.

And on to more novelengage tomorrow!

Nils

Last month, I survived a major outbreak of my now vaning illness, I had epiphanies about my happiness, about joy, time, and the universe, and I reconnected to my ninety one years old grandmother, who I hadn't spoken to in five years.

Oh, I also wrote thirty seven thousand words of rather more goldish than purple prose, of a trilogy of exactly the kind of books I desperately want to read.

And hell yeah, my greatness as a writer and as a gentle, loving human being takes nothing whatsoever from yours. True greatness amplifies.

Meeresbande

Nils and Jenni, thanks for sharing what you have learned and gained!

I forgot to mention that I learned to write descriptions -- I hadn't written those before and now I did and it actually works and makes the world and setting so much more real and rich, it's very exciting. I've got a star system more beautiful than a jewel necklace and a party without gravity but with ravens and fairies ;)

Molly

This is a bit of a tough question because I feel like I learned or re-learned everything during NaNo. I could sit here and list for days if I really sat down and tried to think of everything. I'm sure you all have better things to do than read list about things I learned though so here are the three big things I learned from NaNo:

1. I have potential because although I wasn't thrilled with the novel that came out of NaNo there was a lot in there that was invaluable to what will become the second draft.

2. Discovery work is invaluable and you can't rush it. I did and now I have a story that doesn't look anything like it's supposed to. Scratch that, I have a story that doesn't really look like anything right now except for maybe an amoeba.

3. Some days you're going to write to be writing and maybe that's not really the fun and fuzzy job you signed up for. But then there are awesome days that make up for the lackluster ones.

Nils

Amoebas are cute! :3

Molly

There are many cute, shapeless entities like Ditto from Pokemon, Sluggies from Super Mario Bros, and the half-melted snowman in my front yard. However my story is not one of them. Well, maybe it is today because it's making sense but generally it's not.

Which brings me to another thing I discovered, editing is much more rewarding than writing for me because I can see my story changing and it's hard, crafty work that I can explain to other people in terms they understand (having edited many a school paper for grammar, clarity, fluff, etc).

Jenni

I've also learned that sometimes the story has ideas of it's own, and that really, it works better to not fight them. But having a basic outline can make getting words down go a bit more smoothly sometimes. Perhaps because you (read me) aren't always trying to figure out from scratch what comes next.

Nils

Meeresbande, I think I told you in person, but just for the record: I am incredibly proud of you. Your book is amazingly awesome and fascinating (Spockvoice), and I say this as a discerning sci-fi fan more than your sibling. :)
And as someone who knows what you're going through, let me just make one thing very clear: You rock rock rock more than Blickwinkel. <3

And Molly, Jenni and everyone else: I am also exceedingly proud of you and your achievements, and grateful for all the support and enthusiasm you have shown. Rock on. :)

Books are so very important. They are human magic, and we're the magicians, witches and sorcerers.

BA_Matthews

A little late, but I learned about editing and story structure from Nanowrimo this year. I had originally set a Nano-rebel goal of 50k of fiction and then I realized that my editing needed to be done. After going through my book, reading what I had and what I needed, I wrote up an outline detailing all of the scenes I had and all of the scenes I needed. I spent Nanowrimo writing and working on all of those that I needed to add. It worked out wonderfully.

I not only finished the month with 55,698 words but I also finished writing all of the "new" scenes that I needed for editing. It was a whopping 40% of my book when all was said and done. I'm really hoping that there are still spots open during the first week of January for Lani's Revision class. I want to take it to get this novel where it needs to be and I won't have the cash until then.

Brusselsprout

Late late late. After banging away at Nano, I lost my mojo in December - something to do with the teaching and prepping for Xmas and doing family things. Now I've made a resolution not to redo Nano every month but to get to 2500 words per week every week this year. Because the WIP is actually a trilogy and with my 50K from Nano, I'm about half way through book 1.

Then I came across a really interesting series of posts by fantasy writer Rachel Aaron about writing craft, about prepping for writing and then writing for the joy of it, and I am still doing my 2500 but I'm also retrofitting the plot and characters because I'm currently learning so much about the world that I'm writing about, and it's not directly relevant (otherwise the book would basically be infodump rather than novel) but it is about providing a really secure footing for working for the next couple of years in this time and place.

But if I hadn't done Nano, I wouldn't have learned so much about my characters and that is what is important, and I've also passed a significant hurdle that I couldn't get over the last time I tried this story. And I love this story. The more I discover about the world, the more I love it. And my main characters. I love my main characters. so it's back to scrivener to get some serious work going on characterization, place and action.

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