Week Four of NaNoWriMo

Week Four of NaNoWriMo

This is it, the final week of NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month challenge. We are in the home stretch. Are you wrapping up your story? Did you accomplish what you set out to accomplish? Did you surprise yourself with what you completed?

Even if you didn’t finish a 50,000 word novel, if you spent the challenge learning the discipline to write every day, attempting to put your own style into your story and writing at least a first draft, I think you have been wildly successful! Way to go! You made huge progress but keep going. Let’s finish it. Don’t stop yet.

Did you get a good first draft of your story done, a skeleton with which you can now go back to and add to and keep constructing?

What did you learn about yourself during the challenge? For me, I learned that I did not lose my skill in writing long form fiction. I was able to find the discipline and focus I needed every day I sat down with the goal to write. I also tried something I haven’t done in years that helped get me in the mood to write and kept me writing longer.

I played music while I wrote. Some people find it helpful and some people find it distracting. Because of the subject of what I’m writing, I found the perfect “mood music” to play in the background while I wrote. (For my subject, as well as the season and era in which it takes place, a two-hour loop of in-store Christmas music from Kmart, including all the in-store announcements, from 1974, proved to be most effective in keeping my fingers dancing atop my keyboard longer than I planned most days.)

I hope you were able to make some progress on whatever writing endeavor you started, but it’s not over until it’s finished. NaNoWriMo is just a challenge that begins in November, as far as I’m concerned, and ends when you finish. Don’t lose your momentum. Keep your story going, especially if you have made it a habit of writing every day. Novels are not just written in November.

Put your story down and let your characters finish whatever adventure you have started them on, see how it comes out in the end.

If you managed to finish a full first draft, kudos to you! That is the hardest part. You’re almost to the halfway point. Put it down, let the story simmer in your mind for a couple days, then go back and start fleshing it out, filling in all the details for your characters and story.

Keep writing! Every word you write makes you a better writer. All write, all write, all write!