Postmortem: Writing Month 2023

Creative storytelling is like trying to remember something that never happened.

This year I, for the first time, participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). For those who may not know what that is, it’s a national event in which participants work towards writing a draft of a novel equal to 50,000 words. This happens every November.

It was earlier this year that I decided I wanted to participate. I’ve had a story idea in my head for the past four or five years - since about 2019 - that kept tugging at me. Enough was enough, and it was time to begin writing it down.

This year being my first year participating and me being new to creative writing in this capacity, I decided early on in the year to lower the word count goal to 30,000 words. There were a few reasons for this: 1) I wanted a manageable, achievable goal for myself, 2) I didn’t want to dread the number throughout the year, and 3) I wanted to avoid creative burnout at all costs.

A quick bit of math. NaNoWriMo, with its goal of 50,000 words in November (30 days) comes out to 1,667 words per day that the writer needs to write. My own goal of 30,000 came out to a clean 1,000 words per day. When I did that comparison, it felt right to me.

With this change and with these goals in mind, I refer to my participation simply as Writing Month.

In September, I began planning out how I was going to approach November and the story I wanted to write. Do I make an outline? Do I start at the beginning and push straight through? Do I start in the middle? In the end? Do I skip around?

So many questions.

I did some research on how to approach the month - tips and tricks to being successful and making progress every day. There were two sources that stood out to me.

The first is an outlining method called “Save The Cat.” It’s a 15-part outline separated into three acts and that gives percentage estimates for how much of the total word count each step should take up. This resource was immediately invaluable to me; I’m a top-down thinker, so starting at the Big Idea and working down to the details is how I prefer to work. The “Save The Cat” method is exactly that.

Second, I came across author Brandon Sanderson’s 9-Step Outline Method. It involves worldbuilding, creating major, secondary, and minor characters, creating plots and subplots, and then weaving it all together. I didn’t use this method as much as I intended to (my understanding is that it takes some time to properly lay the groundwork - time that I did not have this year), but it’s certainly an appealing method that I’m tucking in the back pocket for the future. Even better, it supplements “Save The Cat” rather well.

In October, I spent time outlining what I could for both characters I had in mind and as much of the plot outline as I could. The farthest I could foresee in terms of the plot was into the second act, and from that point I had no idea where the story would go or where it needed to go. However, I outlined as much as I could and, by my initial estimates, I would get to at least 16,000 words written for the month.

In case I came to a halt with the story, or if I lost steam, I had a backup project on standby to invest some of the word count. In short, this received about 2,600 words by the end of November.

When Writing Month began, I hit the ground walking thanks to my outlines. I have a (bad) habit of editing my work as I’m creating it - something I’ve spent this year working to improve. In the early days of Writing Month this year, I quickly realized that it was a great opportunity to practice creating now and editing later. That said, the first three days were a struggle in this regard. My edit-as-I-go habit was slowing me down.

If you talk to any writer (or any creative), they will eventually mention the “flow,” which is when they enter a state of letting the creativity flow out of them. For a painter, the image pours itself onto the canvas. For a musician, every note is played as intended at the right millisecond. For a writer, the words flow onto the page.

The “flow” was, as I realized in the first three days, what I wanted to reach and what my edit-as-I-go habit prevents me from reaching. So, in those first three days, I worked hard at being intentional about just writing. Not editing. Not thinking. Just writing.

I’m happy to say that each day it became easier to write. Not to edit. Not to think. But to write. As I went along - or rather, after each day’s writing session - I made notes about what would need to be edited later on: a section is too wordy, or needs more detail, or a scene needs to happen earlier or later on, or there might be a continuity error. This was good practice for separating the creating mindset from the editing mindset, and it helped me reflect on what I had written and how it could be improved.

Most days during November, I began the day by writing and did so in one sitting. Typically it took me about one and a half to two hours to reach my daily goal of 1,000 words. Some days the scenes were difficult to write - not knowing what happens next or which character says what and why. Those were often longer days with shorter word counts. Other days I neared the “flow” and scenes wrote themselves. Those were shorter days or saw an extra few hundred words.

At the beginning of the month, I made sure to work ahead a bit each day by writing an extra one or two or three hundred words as a cushion in case I were to get sick or some other unknown were to prevent me from writing later on in the month. I’m glad I did this. Towards the end of Writing Month, due to Thanksgiving, I fell behind by about 2,000 words. In the final week of Writing Month, I had to put in extra time and effort for a few days to catch up. If I had not done extra work earlier in the month, I would have been even further behind. A great lesson.

On November 30th, I achieved my personal goal of 30,000 words, writing a total of 31,035 words. I avoided burnout. I have a great start to the story that’s been in my mind for years. I became a better writer. And I practiced separating creativity and editing.

The story is nowhere near complete, but completing it in a single month was never my goal. My next steps with it are to edit what I have into a firm foundation to continue writing the next leg of the story, which I plan on continuing to do later next year.

P.S. Fast forward to this month - December 2023. I’ve started working on my next music project. Lo and behold, I’m writing quicker than I used to. The practice I did in November, separating writing from editing, is bleeding wholeheartedly into my music writing. More on this later.