I WON!//NaNoWriMo Week 4

Welcome back to my blog! These are some of my writing updates for week 4 of NaNo. Make sure to check out my new about me page, which went up a few weeks ago. This is one of my most lengthy Nano posts because I updated almost every day this week :)

November 22 

I just passed 30,000 words! 🥳🎉

But, I also realized that I need to write 20,000 more words in the next 8 days to win NaNoWriMo. 

Something I've been having trouble with recently is setting goals. I want to give myself something to look forward to every time I reach a small milestone and something to look forward to at the end of November, but I keep getting stuck. (If you have any suggestions on rewards I could do, or want to share what rewards you use, please share in the comments!) 

I've written 1,700 words so far today. That may not sound like much, but it was a hard scene to write because my characters were very emotional after a tragic plot twist.

It's currently 12:02am, and I've written 3,500 words today! (Or should I say yesterday...) That's one of my highest word counts of the month.

November 25

Wow. Only 5 days until the end of NaNoWriMo and I have about 12,000 words to go. I've really been pushing myself for the last few days, which is why I haven't been blogging about them. 

Today I've written 1.6k words, and it's 8:40pm. I write the most during nighttime, so hopefully, I'll get to 3k in the next few hours.

It's currently 9:45, and I've finished writing 2,600 words. Even more exciting than that- I passed 40k words! That means that I only have about 10k words to write before I win.

November 26

Happy Thanksgiving! It's currently 3pm, and it will probably be a few hours before I'll start writing today. My thanksgiving celebration was for lunch, and we'll probably have a more simple dinner.

I wrote 285 words today, which was very little but I enjoyed my thanksgiving and I'll catch up tomorrow.

November 27

I'm at 41,900 words and I've written about 1.2k words so far today. I'm trying to write 3,000, which is a big endeavor because it's one of my highest word counts that I've only achieved about 5 times this month, but hopefully!

I wrote about 2700 words today which is close enough to 3k.

November 28

I just finished my first 1k words for the day, and I'm feeling great! I only have about 6k more words until I win NaNo, so I'm confident that I'll be able to do it within the next two days.  

It's 11:30pm, and I've written 1.5k more words! This takes me to 46k, and it's hard to believe that I only have 4,000 words left before I win. 

November 30

Oh my god, it's the last day of NaNo! Yesterday I wrote 1.5k words, and I have 2.5k to write today, and then I'll win! I never thought I could do it, but it's becoming really possible. I'm not going to let go of November until 50k words are written.

Only 900 words until I win, I'm so excited! 

I JUST WON NANOWRIMO WOOHOO!! 🥳🥳🎉🎉 I'm at exactly 50,007 words. I have no idea how I did this! I definitely learned a lot about writing and writing habit, so I'm very happy that I stuck to it and got through.

What I Learned

• Quantity... over quality? 

This NaNo, I actually learned a lesson that people usually learn the opposite of. You should worry more about the quality of you writing rather than number of words, right? Not always. Something big I learned is when you draft, you should just stick to it and get it done as quickly as possible, letting it be a brain dump. If you don't, writer's block will hit and there's a big chance you could quit your project or let other things easily get in the way.

Another reason I think quantity is better in the first draft is that it helps you form a habit of focusing and writing each day. I was proud of what I could achieve, and a lot of that was out of the habit of writing a lot for 30 days straight.

• I learned a lot about my characters, which I wouldn't learn when drafting regularly. 

In the 30 days I had to write my novel, I was able to explore so much about my characters and their traits and feelings. Because I needed all 50k of those words, I sometimes wrote extra fun scenes where my character just hung out or did little things that didn't really contribute with plot.

Even though I might only keep snippets of these types of scenes in the future, they helped tremendously with finding out how my characters interact, speak, and think. 

• I haven't finished my novel yet?

Usually, I'm an underwriter, and I expected my novel to be ended by 50k words. However, it's not finished yet, and act 3 has just barely started! I'm thinking that it could go up to 70k or even 80k words drafted before completely finished.

My Next Steps

Even though I still have 20k or so words to draft, I won't be writing anything in the first two weeks of December. I want to give myself a break from all that writing.

I'll get back in the swing of things after those first two weeks, but I won't be writing as much as I did during NaNo- probably only 500 words a day until I work my way up to higher daily word counts. I also won't be writing very much because of the holiday season. 

Thank you for reading, and following along with my NaNoWriMo journey this month! If you participated, tell me in the comments: did you reach your goal? Did you learn something along the way? What did you get out of your NaNo experience? 

Also, you can expect a December Bullet Journaling post and a New Years Resolution post coming your way soon!