Friday, November 30, 2012

Why I'm Glad I Failed NaNoWriMo

50,000 words in 30 days. That's the challenge of National Novel Writing Month and I FAILED. Not just failed by a little. We could call this one an epic fail.

I started out with a story that I thought would excite me and evolve into something amazing. I challenged myself to do something different from my usual genre and it didn't end up working out.

I'm glad I failed because it was a nice lesson. Deadlines are not encouragement for me. Deadlines are stress and more stress in my life is debilitating to my writing process.

Since giving up on NaNo I've written 3,000 words of a project I had been telling myself I needed to get back to. I spent dinner a few nights ago explaining the entire plot to my husband which totally proved to me that I had a beginning, middle and end (and even hubby thinks it's a good story!).

I'm not going to give myself a deadline for this project. I'm just going to tell myself that I can get it done. I can write a little (or a lot) every day until it is complete.

NaNoWriMo is clearly not for me but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good challenge and a good lesson learned.

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