National Novel Writing Month: How I Wrote 50,000 Words in 30 Days

by Rachel Parsons, bluegrasself@hotmail.com

for Advanced Composition, East TN State U, December 2011

 

A special thank you to my parents, Will Parsons and Wendy Johnston, and to my grandmother,

Dana Moye, who supported me and believed I could do it, even when I wasn’t sure.

 

Chapter One: Dreams

nano_10_winner_120x240-5.pngWhen I was a little girl, like most little girls, I had many dreams for the future that came and went like changing seasons. I wanted to be a ballerina when I was six or seven years old, and then I thought I might like to be the first female president, though I had no idea what that entailed. When I was about nine years old, I went through a phase of wanting to be a jockey like Alec Ramsay in Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion books. The books I was reading often reflected what I thought I wanted to be when I grew up. I imagined that I could be anything I wanted to be, from a detective to a sorcerer, if I just put my mind to it.

            It occurred to me at a very young age, maybe 9 or 10 years old, that I didn’t want to be a jockey like Alec, or a detective like Nancy Drew. What I liked about those stories was the opportunity to look in on their worlds through my books, and if that was fun, why not make my own stories and worlds? Anything I wanted to make was possible. What kid wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to be the master of their own universe? I couldn’t resist and the farm in West Virginia where I lived as a child provided me with the perfect environment for acting out the stories I invented. My two younger brothers and I explored the farm as warriors, sorcerers, cowboys, and anything else we could come up with, each of us playing a different character.

I started writing my own stories, sometimes just in my head for my own amusement, but I fell in love with the process of building my own world from scratch and creating my own people to populate it. I started writing down my own stories about horses and mysteries to share with my family, primarily my two younger brothers, who were my biggest fans. My love for reading was intertwined, inseparably, with my love for writing.

            When I was twelve, I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The notes in the back of the third book revealed to me that Tolkien had created his own languages for the story. A special on the History channel talked about the influence of mythology on Tolkien’s work, and about his love of language, and about how war had shaped the stories he wanted to tell. I was spellbound and amazed by the idea that a person could take stories and use them to tell the world about all the things that were important to them.

From then on, my stories became a reflection of my gradual awakening to the world, which grew from my childhood farm into a vast planet full of people and problems, mostly thanks to my exposure the internet and television. There were many reasons to write, many stories to tell, but I was never completely satisfied with anything I wrote.

Chapter Two: Realization

            The problem was that nothing I did seemed to quite make it into the ultimate form of “novel.” I wanted to finish a novel more than anything. Every story I started and ultimately abandoned brought me closer to the knowledge that this was what I was meant to do. I didn’t want to be a ballerina, or a jockey, or a wizard (okay, I do still kind of want to be a wizard, even though I’m in my last year of college and far past the age of acceptance into Hogwarts). I realized that what I wanted to be was a writer and I had discovered that such a thing was actually possible.

Ages fifteen through seventeen I spent working diligently on writing and rewriting the chapters of a story I would ultimately abandon about a boy with psychic abilities who meets a demon girl in a coffee shop. When I started attending East Tennessee State University as a freshman, I was rewriting that story yet again and I still wasn’t happy with it. There were side projects that never went anywhere, stories about fairy musicians or magical cats. Nothing made it past the first five chapters.

Finally, I ditched the psychic storyline and distracted myself with school essays instead, while I tried to think of a new idea. At that point, I had realized that I didn’t yet know exactly what kind of story I wanted to tell, but I knew that it needed to have meaning and I wanted it to matter. If I was going to put in the work and time to write a complete novel, then I needed motivation. I had to take my personal beliefs and dreams and morph those into a story that other people might understand.

Chapter Three: Challenge

In the last few weeks of October, 2010, my third year at ETSU, I found myself brainstorming for a new story when I was actually supposed to be paying attention in my classes. There was a character I’d created over the summer for fun – a boy robot capable of independent thought – that I’d found I was rather fond of. The story I built up around him in my head felt fresh, like nothing else I’d written in a long time. I was seriously considering starting a new project based on the idea.

Then a friend of mine mentioned that she was going to be participating in “National Novel Writing Month.” This was an event that took place online during the month of November, during which participants tried to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I’d heard about “NaNoWriMo” before but I’d always dismissed the idea as being too much to deal with during the school semester. This time, when NaNoWriMo came up once more, it occurred to me that I had a story that I wanted to write, and maybe this would be just the push I needed to actually make me finish what I started.

NaNoWriMo has its own website, www.nanowrimo.org, where participants create an account in order to write alongside each other. Each person is equipped with a “word count bar” where you update your progress daily. Word count stats also provided by the site show you how much progress you’ve made towards reaching your end goal, and how many words per day you’ll need to write in order to finish on time. The site also has forums for members to chat about their stories and the progress they’ve made, and provides its members with “pep talk” videos from accomplished writers to inspire them along the way.

Creating an account was easy, and from there I could explore the world of NaNoWriMo and test the waters. It was simple and fun and full of people, both young and old, who simply wanted to try to cram as much writing in as possible in 30 days. Everywhere I went on the site, something said “You can do it!” I started to think that maybe I really could do it. Why not? It was worth a try, at least, and if I really managed it, the reward would be an entire story that I could say I had actually finished.

Chapter Four: Jonah

It looked like a great idea, but did I have the time to put into it? I only had four classes that semester but November the last month before finals and I knew I would need time to study. In addition, I didn’t even know if the story I had in mind would amount to anything. But I had a week to think about it before it started, and during that week I wrote a 7,000 word prologue to my story to see if I was really feeling inspired for it. This is technically cheating – you’re not supposed to start your story before the challenge starts. However, I set those 7,000 words aside when the first of November rolled around and I started my word count from the first chapter. I called the story Jonah Kirk Takes the Long Way Home.

The story centered on the boy robot character that I’d spent the whole semester thinking about instead of doing my homework. Jonah Kirk was an eleven year-old boy who just happened to also be a robot. The premise of the story was that Jonah had run away from his maker in the U.S. to Europe in search of a place to call home. It was set some indefinite time in the future, so as to keep me from having to do far more research than actual writing, and so I kept it fun and lighthearted. It became a story of self-discovery as Jonah found both obstacles and new friends along the way, and learned things about himself and about the world he was trying to fit into. It wasn’t just a story about a robot. To me, it was a metaphor for growing up fast when times are hard. I finally had a reason for writing my story.

I fell into a rhythm during that month. Every day, I would take the time to sit down and increase my word count. Usually, the story came to me easily. My main character, Jonah, was a refreshingly youthful person looking at the world through a child’s point of view, the way I wanted to be able to look at the world myself. It wasn’t extra work to write roughly 2,000 words each day. In fact, I spent my school days waiting impatiently for my last class to end so I could get back to Jonah’s adventure and find out for myself what happened next. Each time I finished a chapter, I emailed it to my mother and grandmother, who diligently kept up with reading it and giving me feedback. They were enjoying the adventure as much as I was, and that inspired me to keep going.

 

Chapter Five: Goal

In the meantime, I kept up with my classes and made good grades. I think it was the extra pressure that inspired me to keep doing well in all my subjects while I wrote my book. I was inspired in everything, not just my writing, and every day that I made progress on my word count and brought myself closer to finishing 50,000 words, I had more confidence in myself in everything else that I did. Watching my word count bar go up on my NaNoWriMo account always cheered me up, even when I was having a really bad day.

I regularly updated my progress on my Facebook account as well, and many people who knew me took notice. Classmates wished me luck, and coworkers asked me how I managed to keep up with so much work. I felt almost superhuman. My NaNoWriMo word count marched ever forwards, until I finally reached 50,000 words several days ahead of schedule and realized that I had reached the end of my story as well. The adventure had come to a close. Jonah’s story, of course, had a happy ending. Adding in the prologue I’d written in October, the story was 57,219 words in total, more of a novella than a novel, but an accomplishment nonetheless.

There were prizes for completing the NaNoWriMo challenge; discounts on writing software from sponsors, a free proofread edition of your story from one company if you turned it in before July (which I completely forgot to do), and banners that declared you a “2010 Winner.” The prize that seemed like the biggest to me was the certificate with my name and the name of my novel that I got to print out. I tacked this certificate to my bedroom wall to remind myself that I’d actually done it.

I printed out several copies of my novel to give out to family members as Christmas presents, and consequently spent more money on paper and ink than I probably would have on regular presents. In addition, I made A’s in all my classes that semester, proving to myself that I could not only rise to the challenge presented to me, but also rise above it. I came out of my first round of NaNoWriMo with a manuscript, good grades, and the knowledge that I really could do it.

 

Chapter Six: Again

Winner_120_100_white.pngThis November, I started the challenge all over again with the sequel to my first story, Jonah Kirk and the Automated Response. It was bittersweet to be writing with Jonah again and trying once more for 50,000 words before the end of the month. Just as I had grown thanks to the previous year’s experience, Jonah grew from a little boy to a teenager in his new adventure and I was a little sad to see him growing up, but I was proud too. I was proud of myself for rising to the challenge, and for giving myself the opportunity to say, “Well, actually, I’m working on my second novel now.”

It was harder this time around because the story was bigger. I have more to say, and five classes to keep up with in the meantime. However, I was inspired by family and friends who responded to my second NaNoWriMo adventure with excitement, ready to read the next installment of Jonah’s story. There’s nothing more inspiring to a writer than the knowledge that their writing is appreciated and enjoyed.

It was fun too, to be revisiting NaNo Land with its Procrastination Station forums and inspirational speeches, and people cheering each other on towards the finish line. NaNoWriMo isn’t competitive, it’s cooperative. Everybody wants to see everybody make it to the end. The second year was just the same as the first in that regard, and I was emboldened by my past success. I reached 50,000 words on November 28, once again ahead of schedule.

I still haven’t sent my manuscript to any potential publishers yet; that’s the next step. Soon it will be time for Jonah to leave the nest and for me to grow a thick skin and prepare myself for all those rejection letters, which I will soldier through until I find the right fit. Then I’ll be able to share the adventure with more than just myself and my family, and hopefully I’ll make myself write 50,000 words every November from here on.

 

Additional Note: You Can Do It!

            If you think you might like to give NaNoWriMo a try, go for it! What is important is that you enjoy writing, and if you enjoy it then you should definitely take advantage of the opportunity to write to your heart’s content without worrying about editing or proofreading. Shaping and molding your work into a final product comes later. NaNoWriMo is for proving to yourself that you really are an author and you really can write 50,000 words (or more!) in 30 days. I did it, and you can do it too!

 

Links

http://www.lettersandlight.org/

The Office of Letters and Light “organizes events where children and adults find the inspiration, encouragement, and structure they need to achieve their creative potential.” They run NaNoWriMo and several other similar projects.

www.nanowrimo.org

This is NaNoWriMo’s main site, where pretty much everything happens. It’s a wonderful program that I encourage others to try their hand at. Even if you don’t make the 50,000 word goal, the process is fun and it’s a great community of fellow writers.

http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

The Young Writer’s Program is another program created by the Office of Letters and Light, designed for younger writers.

www.campnanowrimo.org

Camp NaNoWriMo; “From the folks who bring you National Novel Writing Month!” This program is basically NaNoWriMo, held in July and August instead of November.

http://scriptfrenzy.org/

Script Frenzy is similar to NaNoWriMo, but it takes place in April, and the goal is to write a script or screenplay.

https://store.lettersandlight.org/

Stop by the Donation Station to help keep this program going! Alternatively, there’s also an awesome store full of cool NaNo things that one can purchase, which will also support the Office of Letters and Light and their good work.