NaNoWriMo Newbie: Failed and Why I’m Okay with It.

NaNoWriMo has officially ended more than a week ago, I was extremely busy during the first week of December so I couldn’t get a blog post up. And yes, you read it right. I failed NaNoWriMo with around 14k words. That’s less than half but I don’t feel bad about it.

Without NaNoWriMo, my word count would probably be 0.

I’ve written 14k which is more than I have ever written. I have ideas, loads of them but I’ve only ever completed shorter stories so writing more than 10k words for one single story is already an achievement for me. Although they weren’t the best words, I could still work with them.

I was stuck.

I plan my stories but not in detail, it’s usually just an idea and then I discover as I write. At around 12k, I got stuck. I tried to push further but it only made it worse. My story became a tangled mess, like when you put your earphones in your pocket and they come out all tangled so you try to untangle it by blindly tugging or shaking it and it somehow gets even worse. That was what it felt like. I knew I had to step back and fix this before it gets worse. There is a difference between coming up with ideas as you write and throwing random ideas just to add to your word count.

I’ve discovered things about my writing style that I would not have without this event.

NaNoWriMo pushed me to write every day and because of that, I discovered the different ways I work best, the methods that are most efficient to me when I’m a little stuck, the environment I’m the most productive in etc. Even though failing NaNoWriMo might sound like a bad thing, I consider all the things I’ve discovered to be a win. These new things would help me in future writing projects and would totally save me a whole bunch of time because I don’t have to try out different methods anymore to see which one suits me the best.

My idea is actually out of my brain.

That sentence sounds a little weird but ANYWAYS, without NaNoWriMo, my idea would still be sitting while twiddling their thumbs in my mind, waiting to be let out. I am so glad that I’ve taken the biggest step anybody with an idea can take – writing it down.

Not only that those words are not all useless.

The 14 k words were necessary for me to find out which ideas worked and which ideas did not. As I wrote, I made notes of what I wanted to add, explore and research later on. Amongst all the bad words, there was character development. I’ve come to learn more about my characters and to love them. I know what I need to work on to strengthen them and make them even more real. Without NaNoWriMo, they would still be a husk. Now that they seem more like clay that I can shape than just grains of sands that slips between my fingers, my story would hopefully be stronger.

I know I failed but I’ve discovered so much more than if I did not even participate in NaNoWriMo. I will be taking this time to fix some plot holes, research more, plan better and learn. I really like this idea that I have and I’m not going to let it escape. So, if you participated in NaNoWriMo and you failed, don’t be discouraged! Think about what you have done because of NaNoWriMo, forget about the word count if it’s upsetting you and focus on other aspects of writing – especially the process.