That was basically my first thought when my word count barely grazed over the 50,000 word mark. Everything was so quiet, so still. But here we are, after the smoke and ash have cleared, and we have come off conquerors.
How did your last week go?
For me, the struggle was just constantly thinking of scenes to write about, and constantly persuading myself that my ideas aren’t sucky. After writing fantasy fiction for so long, it was really hard to write “normal” fiction that could take place in the present day. I’ll be surprised to see what I’ve been squeezing out of my brain for the past 30 days.
So I think what I learned the most from this experience was basically to not make a difficult task seem more difficult. When it was all over, I realized that I put it at such a level that you might’ve thought I was talking about running a marathon rather than writing a draft. It is hard, but it’s more of an exercise of endurance, creativity, and taking risks. Heck, I discovered a lot about my characters this month, and I even created a few along the way! And my ultimate prize was 90 new pages of material. Boo-yah.
To you 2014 winners, or people who are just working on projects anyway, tell us about your experiences! What’s the basic premise of your work? Connect with us. We’re always happy to make new writing friends and support you. Write a comment below with a link to your social media so we can learn more.
And what are you guys gonna do with all those prizes?!
Congrats on your NaNoWriMo win! My last week was tough. I was already at the 50k mark, but I was bound and determined to finish my manuscript before November ended. I did, barely! As for the winner goodies – #1 on my priority list is to use the 50% off Scrivener and use it to write my next book!
Congrats on finishing the manuscript! Much more important than just having 50,000 words in my opinion. I’ve heard lots of great things about Scrivener from Travis. I’m tempted to get it on my laptop, too. What features do you think would make Scrivener a worthy purchase?
Where to even begin? Scrivener’s main organization system, “the binder,” is great, because it allows you to have separate documents for different scenes and chapters that you can rearrange and view in different combinations. It also has a tracking feature, where you can set word count goals for your whole project and each writing session, complete with a motivational status bar. There’s also places for character and setting sheets and research. I could go on, but I’ll stop before I sound too much like a Scrivener evangelist.