My First Serious Attempt at NaNoWriMo

Halloween has come and gone, and November is here. More importantly, that means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) has finally arrived.

It may surprise some readers to learn that I’m no stranger to writing my own novels. While I’m not published (yet), my first novel remains something I finished drafting during 2020’s lockdowns with daily writing just to prove to myself I could do this. I still have the original word counts logged in a Hobonichi notebook from that year as well.

“Each time I open the manuscript, I decide if I want better foreshadowing in this chapter, better pacing in that chapter, and so forth.”

When I went back to look at May, June, July, and August in 2020 and 2021, I was surprised at how I had enough of a word count to win NaNo multiple times over. However, word count alone isn’t what makes a great novel, and I have delegated quite a bit of my own free time over the past few months going back to try and edit and revise despite how gargantuan in size it has become. Each time I open the manuscript, I decide if I want better foreshadowing in this chapter, better pacing in that chapter, and so forth.

But I decided to see what would happen if I incorporated the 5AM Club “growth” part of my routine to editing once or twice a week. I made some progress, although it’s a bit slow. Additionally, I’ve had two other novel ideas, both of which take place in the same universe I’ve established. However, I’ve put off writing both for years. It was only recently that I wanted to see what would happen if I let the words flow from my fingers during the 5AM Club to see what results I got.

Then it hit me: Why not use the 20 minutes of growth each morning from the 5AM Club to participate in NaNo this year?

This enormous realization made me feel more vindicated to attempt it this year, so for the first time, I will seriously be attempting NaNoWriMo in November as it was originally intended.

What Will I Be Doing?

“…my victory condition will be writing daily. That’s it.”

Okay, I may have been stretching it when saying “originally intended” in the previous paragraph. While I will participate during November, my criteria for “winning” NaNo will be more lenient. Instead of shooting for a minimum of 50,000 words in the month, I’m not going to worry about an overall word count minimum at all.

Instead, I’m going to shoot for the daily writing habit instead. I did this during the summers for a few years before cold weather came along and disrupted my habits (In 2020 and 2021, I used morning runs in warmer weather as a “keystone habit,” you could say, which is why I only really wrote seriously during summers). Since it’s cold, I’m going to take this writing habit back in a different way thanks to the 5AM Club.

That said about my word count, my victory condition will be writing daily. That’s it. Whether I surpass 50K words or barely crack 20K will make no difference to me just so long as I’m writing daily. I wrote a reminder to myself in my bullet journal how 1 word is still better than writing 0. Besides, I did last attempt NaNo in November all the way back in 2012, and I failed miserably because I had no writing habit to speak of. Needless to say, the frequency of writing is my biggest priority.

My tools of the trade will only be whatever notes or ideas I’ve scribbled in my pocket memo book, any said notes I’ve transferred over into Obsidian (using my second brain again!), and my biggest tool of all: Scrivener on macOS, the sole reason I still have any Mac hardware in my possession. My previous manuscript was entirely written with Scrivener, and I’ve been extremely satisfied with it, so I’m going to give another shot at writing a novel in it.

As for how I’m writing, I’m going to focus primarily on getting words out sooner and editing later. I know some authors like to plan everything much more slowly or will even agonize over a page for hours until it’s perfect. While editing and proofreading are certainly vital for writing to flourish, I’m going to do those at a later time just to keep my pace up.

Lastly, I won’t be sharing the actual novel anywhere, as I am a bit reserved and private in that regard. I would share the genre at the very least, but I have a rather difficult time pinning down what it would even fall under, which is why I hesitate to try and narrow it down. Regardless, I’ve had the idea bouncing around in my head for a very long time, and I’m going to finally commit it to writing to achieve the personal victory I’ve craved for years.

“Needless to say, the frequency of writing is my biggest priority.”

Keep an eye out for an update on how I did at the end of November as well as how I feel about the results. In the meantime, I should still find time to publish a few other posts here and there.

In the meantime, have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo? What about the other handful of months that are used to celebrate it outside of November?