Draft Zero to Writing Hero Chapter VI: NaNoWriMo 2018

[Image: My Hermes Baby typewriter with text "Draft Zero to Writing Hero"]

Hi fronds! Welcome to the grand tale about my writing journey! I wanted to write about this in all its roller-coaster ups and downs because I had a lot of trouble finding this information when I was getting started in 2016. This is definitely going to span several posts, but I hope my story will help someone else with their own path to publishing. If you'd like to know how this all began, please start with Chapter I.

Chapter VI: NaNoWriMo 2018

With less than a month to go before NaNoWriMo, I was in panic mode. I'm a planner, but a notoriously bad one - usually, I think I'm 80% ready, but the real number is more like...30%. Even so, I usually have my NaNoWriMo idea bouncing around in my mind for a few months before November rolls around; having only three weeks was...well, like being told I suddenly had to write a full novel on a topic I'd barely researched.

[GIF: Hand hitting the Panic button from Netflix's "Nailed It"]

Naturally, I turned to Writer Twitter to ask how in the world I was supposed to do all this prep for an idea I'd only just come up with. And of course, one of my writing buddies came to the rescue. They recommended Alan Watt's THE 90-DAY NOVEL, and I dutifully borrowed the Kindle version from my local library back in the US. 

If you're not familiar with THE 90-DAY NOVEL, the basic premise (other than writing a novel in 90 days) is that you spend about four weeks doing writing exercises that dig into the main character's motivations and background, the antagonist's responses to the main character, and how the outline of the manuscript will change in response. After week four, you start writing your draft, ideally as quickly as possible. There's a revision period after that, but that's where I deviate from the process.

Anyway. Once I had the digital book in my hands, I dutifully completed the four weeks of writing exercises, taking notes along the way. I explored ideas for the main character and antagonist, fleshing out their respective backstories and finding ways to weave them into the narrative. Plot points changed to new ones and reverted back to old ones as I went, but I was slowly narrowing in on the spine of the manuscript, the things that would hold it up. My partner, Qiren, gave me a lot of help along the way, and it quickly became a collaborative project.

Then, sure as Cleveland is the Heart of Rock and Roll, it arrived: NaNoWriMo 2018. I was nervous, but I was also excited - this was the first time I was doing NaNoWriMo with an actual, real-life outline in place. (In the past, I've kind of cheated by using it for revisions, or tried and failed to reach 50,000 words.) I could feel that this year was different. I was freelancing as a Dutch-to-English translator, so I didn't have class or full-time work to worry about; Qiren and I didn't know anyone in Belgium, so I wasn't in danger of being invited to events I couldn't back out on; and we were trying to support two people on a tiny academic stipend meant for one, so it wasn't like I could get out of writing by going somewhere, even just to the coffee shop around the corner. I had no choice but to stay home and write.

[GIF: Person writing in a notebook]

And write I did, over 2,000 words per day. Rarely have the words flowed as freely for me as they did during NaNoWriMo 2018. I sat down every day with a mug of tea and banged out another scene, referencing my 90-Day Novel notes as I went and making adjustments to them as the story adapted - and refusing to go back to make edits to the manuscript as I went. That November, I wrote my first YA contemporary, putting words on paper about a robotics team and a romance that blossoms between two of the teammates. And it felt real. Nothing I'd ever written before felt as true to life as this manuscript, even though it was the roughest of first drafts. The words that ebbed and flowed paralleled my relationship with my partner, Qiren, and gave me an outlet to address things I'd done wrong. It was cathartic, and it was raw, and even though writing is an impossible task sometimes that feels like digging your heart out of your chest with an ice cream scoop, writing it felt like the right thing to do.

I don't know if it was all the prep work I did, or the fact that I had the time and energy to devote to my first draft, or maybe both, but the process of writing an entire novel in a month just plain wasn't as daunting as it had seemed in the past. Much to my surprise, I hit 50,000 words on November 20^th - but I wasn't done. I finished NaNoWriMo on November 27^th with a first draft totaling 62,000 words. At that point, my brain was exhausted. I had been hammering out this draft zero for a month, not to mention the month of prep time beforehand. I didn't even want to think about revisions or beta readers or critique partners, even though I knew from past experience that I'd need them soon. So I let myself have a small respite, just a little break, before the inevitable next draft would require my attention.
To be continued...