This year’s NaNoWriMo is officially done ! Yesterday was the last day to try and win the challenge (or your personal challenge/goals) and I hope that all of the participants got something positive out of this exciting and challenging event.
As for me, week 4 was not bad at all. I felt less lost than during week 3, and more steady. I made my peace with the fact that I would not reach the 50k words goal, so I set myself a smaller goal that I could achieve, and so… I reached 40k words !
I’ve never written that much in such a short period of time, so I’m completely delighted haha. NaNoWriMo got me all excited and anxious at the same time, so to be honest I’m happy that it is over, but I’m also immensely proud of what it allowed me to accomplish.
Writing everyday is not my usual writing style, so I think it was the biggest challenge for me during this month, and in the end there were only 2 days where I didn’t write, so I’m also happy about that.
I’ve learned a lot during this month. About me as a writer, but also about my projects and where they can take me. Before NaNoWriMo, I felt defeated, thinking that I didn’t write enough this year. I had hoped to publish something else during the year (other than my first poetry book published in February), but in the end I was far from that. NaNoWriMo gave me the boost I needed to believe in my works again.
It also allowed me to see which projects I was truly struggling with, and now that the challenge is over, I will have time to think about why I’m struggling so much, and how I can change that (project number 2, hello ~). I was also so surprised to see how my brand new project evolved during this month. I started it from scratch, barely brainstorming for names and the beginning of world building the day before the challenge started…. And now I have almost 30k words of a story I love. I can’t wait to see where this project will lead me.
Oh and I told you before about how great it was to put all your writing projects on the NaNoWriMo website and see how much you’ve written throughout the year, right ? I’m at more than 122k words for this year at the moment. I think I will keep updating over there just to see my overall total grow haha. By any chance, do you guys use another platform/software/anything to have this ? To keep track of your progress on multiple projects and have overall information too ? I wonder if there’s something else.
Anyway, my first NaNoWriMo is over, and I think I will try again next year. It was a great experience.
What about you ? How did it go ? How do you feel now ?
Have a lovely day, and see you next week ~
Marie.
Marie K. Ricci - Author | Translator 