November Draws Ever Closer

I know that even after November 2022 my story is still going to be a rough nightmare of a draft of my first story. I have been reading through what I have so far and this is taking a while for me because I regularly pause to take notes and simply just cringe at the thought that I wrote these words in that order.

I can’t seem to separate the fact that this is a FIRST draft and not a finalised product.

Every best selling, movie or TV show adapted, award winning novel has had a terrible first draft. Remember that.

I thought I’d be fine at first.

“This isn’t my first draft, it’s a zero draft.”

“I’m just getting words on the paper.”

And my personal favourite which is a quote from Shannon Hale, “I’m only shoveling sand into a box so later I can build castles.”

No one but you reads your first draft so you’re just telling yourself the story the first time you write it. When you read it back you just need to sculpt it into something cohesive, pretty and entertaining for others.

But regardless, since last November when I speedily finished NaNoWriMo and didn’t get my chapter goal completed I knew I’d need to continue it.

My book is 32 chapters long and I finished writing about 18/19 of them to completion. So arguably another 50,000 words should tip me over to the complete manuscript mark.

I did try to continue writing in December to push through and finish but the burnout I felt after November lasted me all the way through to March, where I didn’t write a word that whole time.

But the euphoria I felt getting that far was enough to make me feel like I’ve done the most amount of work in my entire life so it was worth it. Plus if you take into account the fact that I did have a minimum of 400 words for every chapter… I did finish my entire book in that challenge.

But I must admit that as the days tick away and I realise the extra hours I’m taking on in my day to day job I’m scared for November to reach us. I usually plan for the first few days on NaNoWriMo but then life does the typical and gets in the way and I need to catch up. This didn’t seem to falter me too much as I still finished the challenge two days early so whether this was the culmination of NaNoWriMo or the benefits of my extra work that I did when I was catching up

So right now my plans for preparing for November are to read through what I have currently and realising the basic edits that I missed writing through it the first time. Spelling mistakes and the like. I have also taken note of any inconsistencies, like how in one chapter I start calling one of my characters by another name, that is on the list of things to fix.

Also I’ve noticed I have a dreadful habit of information dumping and not describing settings as adequately as I want to.

I didn’t sit for months before hand drawing maps and pages and pages of information about my locations just for me to skip over it.

I have also identified a few chapters that consist entirely of dialogue between two characters so I am going through those and taking note on index cards of how to break it up and make it less boring.

I feel like I am taking on a huge undertaking with not much time to get everything I want ready before November 1st but I know that that is just what needs to be done to write a book whether it’s for a challenge or not.

So my planning started in August so I have made it my mission to be completely ready for the beginning of NaNoWriMo and I am getting myself very excited to continue writing.

Are you taking part in NanNoWriMo this year and if so what are your methods to help you reach your goal. I’d love to hear from you all.