Nanowrimo 2019: My experience, success and thoughts

First of all, how was your Nanowrimo2019?

Good? Successful? Not how you expected? Disappointing?

All of these are okay and accepted here, no judgment coming from me. 

If you don't know what Nanowrimo is, you can read up on it here, but the short version is basically that it is an international writing challenge (don't get confused by the name) where you write 50 000 new words in 30 days. 

For me this was the fourth year that I took part and the second year that I won, so I am not as experienced as some of the other writers out there, but by now, I know how it works. 

This year was slightly different the last couple of years because first of all I didn't plan on doing Nanowrimo this year. My mental health is all over the place, there are some difficulties with my family and my personal life and on top of that work and university have been crazy. So naturally I didn't want to add any more stress.
Or so I thought, because once I saw the first live writing sprints and Vlogs on day one and two, something grabbed me and I spontaneously decided to take the challenge after all. 

I was already playing the catching up game on day three. 

For some reason though, the motivation of having to catch up and the relatively low expectations I had because I didn't know which project to focus on or even had an outline for any of my first draft ideas, was incredible. 

In the first three days I wrote a total of over 9100 words and I honestly can't tell you where they came from. I had decided to work on a project that I started 6 years ago and never got more than the first chapter done. It was thrilling. 

But as you can see my graph for this Nanowrimo looks like an absolute mess, I did write every day, the days where it looks like I didn't write were the days where I only counted my words after midnight or forgot to add my words to the website and editing your wordcount only came on day 18 I think (don't quote me on it) 

I was generally so happy with the progress I made because I had thought I wouldn't be able to write a single word and here I was, having writing days with over 5k. 

After finishing the first novella of the three part series that I started 6 years ago I switched to a different project, my most recent novel on Wattpad (you can find it here, but don't judge, it is a first draft) and edited the sh*t out of it. Like, deleting over 10k editing. And it made me so happy. For the first time I enjoyed editing. There was somehting in the air this November, the writing sprints on Twitter were incredible, live write-ins were so much fun and everyone was just so supportive of each other. I actually finished editing the first draft of The Interview, fixed a tone of timeline issues and started the first three chapters of The Interview 2. 

Did I wonder if I was doing Nanowrimo right? Yes. Did I care about it enough to stop writing on a project that I really enjoyed and that I wasn't stuck at? Hell no. 

In the end, for me it only mattered that I got words written and made progress with my stories. And that is what Nanowrimo is about for me. 

There are always going to be days where you don't feel like writing or when life is just more important than a writing challenge and that is okay. I realised it first hand this year because I only had fun with Nanowrimo, I wrote whenever I felt like it because I hadn't planned on taking part or even winning. 

So with a picture of my wiggly monthly progress I will leave you for now, I hope you had fun this nanowrimo and that you are not tumbling into Nanowrimo Hangover. I for my part feel like I can keep going with writing this year and won't have to put everything down for a couple of weeks like it happened to me last year. 

This was it from me for now, I have a lot of new posts planned, but as always, I can't promise that I will get them up like I want to. 

Take care and write on,
Lena

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