I Did NaNoWriMo and Wrote a Book!

One of my longest-running dreams has been to write a book. Ever since I was a child and discovered my love of reading, I have wanted to participate in the creating of a story. I love to write, and have written several books worth of blogs, but any time I have tried to sit down and write a cohesive story, I always got stuck. I couldn’t move past a bad writing day or a new idea that meant changing everything that came before. Thinking I simply needed more structure, I even attempted NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month) in the past. I never got past the first week.

This year, I decided to try again. Not just with the structure of NaNoWriMo, but with the support of a Write a Romance Novel Workshop given by Vanessa Zoltan, the host of two of my favorite podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and Hot & Bothered. With classes every Sunday throughout October and November, I was walked through the process of how to prepare to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, and then encouraged to do so through small groups.

Why a Romance Novel?

Although I like to read romance novels, it has never been my goal to write a romance novel specifically. So why sign up and pay for this course? Well, first of all, I felt like it would be fun to learn from Vanessa Zoltan. But I also thought that this might be a nice way to ease into writing a book, since romance novels have traditional character tropes, plot beats, and expectations that give the creation sandbox solid limits to work within.

This turned out to be true! I identified romantic relationships I like in media and used those as guidelines when I needed inspiration for what my characters would do. And when I grew bored or confused about what to write, I could hop over to a Happily Ever After scene, or a Dark Night of the Soul scene, and write that with all its tropey goodness.

Low Expectations

Without a doubt, the best part of the course for me was the consistent messaging that our goal was not to write a book…it was to “write a shitty book.” Over and over again, we were reminded that you cannot edit a blank page, so write literally anything! Another key message was “there’s no honor in getting to 50,000 words,” along with practical advice about how to keep the word count flowing. Some of things I used often were:

• Do not, EVER, go back and erase something you’ve already written. I actually decided that the scene where I initially had my meet cute worked better in the middle of the book. Instead of going backwards, I wrote a paragraph describing everything I needed to change and wrote a new summary outline of the book, then I rewrote the scene as I wanted it even though it now technically exists twice in my document. That’s Editor Tricia’s problem!
• Introduce a side character that is just you, and if you aren’t feeling inspired, have them tell your main character about their day. As in, my actual day. I gave a lot of therapeutic advice to my main characters through a Mary Sue.
• Make your characters do things that you’ve done. I went to see the musical Hadestown during the month I was writing 50,000 words, and I realized I’d forgotten to do my daily allotment. When I got home, I wrote a scene in which my main characters went to Hadestown and then discussed all the things that I was thinking about.
• Write for the sake of writing. This is a little vague, but what I mean is that I learned to divorce writing from the finished product. I am doing NOTHING with this book, because I don’t think it’s got legs! And I feel really good about it, because even though the finished product isn’t going anywhere, I learned A LOT about writing skills, style, and discipline.

What Next?

I want to keep writing! Probably not 1,666 words per day, because that feels unsustainable. But I have an idea for a next project that I want to chip away at, maybe 500 words per day (having a goal really helped, though I want a smaller one moving forward). I’m keeping in touch with the small group that I was assigned to, and I’m thinking about joining a writing group in Vancouver.

This was such an amazing experience. I feel proud of what I accomplished, but purely in an internal sense. After years of side hustling and monetizing hobbies, it feels really good to have written an entire (terrible) novel and not feel like I need to polish it or try to put it out into the world. External validation and reward is great, but it feels really nice to be satisfied only for my own sake.

What About You?

Have you ever doing NaNoWriMo? Or have you taken an impactful writing course? I want to hear about it!