{"id":681,"date":"2015-11-30T05:33:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T05:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/2015-11-29-nano-results-here\/"},"modified":"2015-11-30T05:33:07","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T05:33:07","slug":"2015-11-29-nano-results-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/2015\/11\/30\/2015-11-29-nano-results-here\/","title":{"rendered":"NaNo Results Here"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"

Screen shot from my final day of writing.<\/p><\/div>\n

I did it. I NaNo’d and won. Winning, for those new to NaNo, is an individual accomplishment of writing 50,000+ words during the month of November.* I pulled an idea from my folder and played around with it, putting together a rough plot outline in the last few days of October. Then, starting November 1, I wrote every day, finishing a rough draft of my first novel, Bell Woods<\/em>, this afternoon. Here’s what I learned.<\/p>\n

1. I can write. Who knows how well, but I can pump out words, including, to my surprise, dialogue. Fast fingers definitely help, as does letting go of worries about quality.<\/p>\n

2. You learn by doing. A month of writing, over 50,000 words, has increased my stamina and my knowledge of story structure. Even if I couldn’t achieve it, I could recognize how tension builds, how story lines intersect, how to make a character or situation disappear for a while and reappear. I have no doubt that when I do this again, I’ll be able to do it a lot better.<\/p>\n

3. Writing improves reading. I’ve also noticed effects on my reading, particularly re-reading. I can see how things are planted, how they grow through a story, what characters are simply sounding boards for ideas. So cool to gain this insight into a craft that I love.<\/p>\n

4. I love writing. What amazing escapism to get to create my own world! I can make absolutely anything I want happen there. To the extent that my skills allow, I can make my dream book come into existence. What a rush, what joy, what an awesome hobby to have.<\/p>\n

I will be doing this again. Definitely. As for my rough draft, I’m going to let it sit for a few weeks and look forward to reading it through in a while. I haven’t read it yet – no editing or back-tracking is part of the NaNo ethos – and my draft now sits, a delightful** present waiting to be opened. <\/p>\n

* As an aside, I absolutely love the non-competitive nature of NaNo. It’s all about creating community, supporting one another and helping as many people as possible to live their writing dreams. <\/p>\n

**thinking optimistically. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did it. I NaNo’d and won. Winning, for those new to NaNo, is an individual accomplishment of writing 50,000+ words during the month of November.* I pulled an idea from my folder and played around with it, putting together a rough plot outline in the last few days of October. Then, starting November 1, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}