November is over and three weeks gone now, and I still feel a bit dazed. Feels a bit like everyone around me is too – how did it get to be nearly Christmas? We still haven’t even put up our Christmas tree yet! This year’s November was rough, which is strange because it is the first November in a long time in which I wasn’t working in crisis mode. I almost missed having the ready excuse.
On to the main point of these post, the things I learned!
The Importance of A Good Idea
The first thing that went wrong with my NaNoNovel this year was that while I loved the idea, I wasn’t in love with it so I ended up struggling to keep interested in it all month long. Frankly fairies aren’t my thing – I have nothing against them, but they don’t fascinate me. I didn’t have any burning desire to write this particular story. Just to make it extra frustrating it had a lot of internal conflict and not much happen externally. The idea wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the right idea.
My advice to myself for future NaNoWriMos is to make sure I have an idea that I can’t wait to let flow from my fingertips. An idea which I’m barely holding back, not one I have to go drilling for.
The Importance of Planning
I’ve never really thought of myself as a plotter, or a pantser for that matter, but I’ve found that stories I’ve written where I’ve had some sort of outline for first, even if I end up no where near that outline, usually turn out better and are easier to write. It’s like having a map for a new city – even if you never use it, it’s still nice to have when you end up in a tangled mess of dead ends.
Fairy’s Book was a story I’d been toying with for a few years now, but it’s never gotten beyond a bit of concept art and a general idea of the story. I didn’t even have the structure of a quest or archetype to fall back on.
A good summary, or outline, would have also confirmed what my gut was trying to tell me – that there wasn’t currently enough story there to last 50,000 words. I stretched it out as long as I could and it ended around 30k. I reached 50k by writing 20k of fanfiction. (A plan would have also also shown me that my heart wasn’t in it.)
Next year I will have a plan, even an outline if I can manage it! Sure no battle plan ever survives the first encounter with the enemy, but you have one just for that reason. Better to have a sacrificial battle plan then to have your novel be the casualty. And who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and my plan will survive that first encounter!