And the struggle was real, you guys.
Seeing that 2015 is a year that ends with an odd-number, I decided that I was going to focus on one particular story for the entire month (instead of a collection of short stories). During the last two weeks of October, I had a kernel of an idea and focused on sketching out the characters and setting so that I wouldn’t stumble over these details when I started writing. I didn’t have much of a plan (I know! I’m a planner) of how I wanted the story to go, but I figured that that was the joy of NaNo. I was going to be spontaneous.
I knew that I was in trouble when I started flailing on day 3.
By the end of day 2, I hit a road block with my story. No big deal. Whenever that happens, you should skip ahead to a scene that you do want to write and then fill in the blanks later.
After day 3, I was at a total lost. I had no idea what to do with this story. I just had all these random scenes.
So I caved in and deviated from that story to work on a short story instead. I figured that taking a step back would be helpful.
I wrote three short stories and I think in my heart, I really wanted to write some kind of road-trip story. So on day 7, I set out writing an adventure/comedy about the Oregon Trail.
Turns out, that was the story that stuck.
Most likely, things weren’t historically accurate. (I was doing research on the spot and didn’t sweat it too much because I knew that this story was not something that will probably ever leave my laptop. I also may or may not have played one game of The Oregon Trail to give me possible story ideas.) I did look at a map of the journey across the country and had my fictional family follow that.
I worked on this story until day 27. I didn’t stop because I ran out of ideas (although, I did blow through many of the possible conflicts that I had written down). I stopped because I was growing tired of the story. I really wanted to keep it going until the 30th, but I just couldn’t do it.
So for the remainder of the month, I worked on another short story.
In the end, my grand total word count was…
51,177 words!!!
I was only 942 words shy of last year’s, but I think I was just aiming to win again.
Because in addition to all the NaNo struggle, I wasn’t getting much sleep as I tried to incorporate NaNo time with school, homework, and some kind of social life. I did indeed write at least 1667 words daily during the month, but I was not very good with time management. I made time to write by either spending an hour in the college library in between classes to crank words out and by postponing homework until NaNo was done for the day. That word count needs to be updated before midnight, you know.
I won, but it was tough this year. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved to see December 1st.
But at least I have this to show for my struggles:
^ Ignore the awkward lighting from my desk lamp.
