I'm Back!

Hello, Interwebz! I am back from my sort-of hiatus turned actual hiatus. I was busy with a big writing project that my friends and I challenged each other to.  We called it "NaNoTriMo," which was basically writing 50,000 words in three months instead of one month. It was a lot of fun, until I put off most of the writing 'til the middle of February.

So the last month and a half or so has been a lot of writing chaos for me. I didn't do an outline for this novel, so I was "pantsing" the whole way. Basically, I was doing most of my writing completely off the cuff. Now, I had a general idea of what I wanted, but not having an outline definitely slowed me down.

I learned some valuable lessons from this endeavor that I thought I would share with you.

1.) Slow and steady wins the race

In some ways, this challenge was harder than NaNoWriMo because it was spread out over so much time. On the other hand, not writing at the breakneck speeds required for NaNoWriMo helped me to focus on some of the finer points of my novel. I learned that a small daily commitment, as long as you actually keep at it, pays off just as much as a huge sprint. It also leaves you much less exhausted.

2.) Procrastination will bite you in the butt

My last two weeks of this challenge were really stressful. Even though I still didn't have to do as many words per day as needed for NaNo, the sense of being behind was not pleasant. Don't write tomorrow or when you 'find time.' Write now. Make time. Otherwise, your novel will take a lot longer than three months to write.

3.) Anything can be fixed with editing

Hate something about your story? Keep writing. Notice an error? Keep writing. If you obsess over these little things, you'll pysch yourself out and get stuck. Why, yes, I speak from experience. If you feel like there are big messes in your story, it's because there are. But don't worry! You can go back and fix them with the magic of editing. For now, just keep going. A lot of times, you won't even know what specifically needs to be fixed until you're done anyway.

So, that was my three month adventure, so I'll be trying to get back to my regular posting schedule.

Write on, everybody!