NaNoWriMo Year 2 Reflections

The overall takeaway I’ve had from completing my second year of NaNo is that it is much, much easier the second time around. Completing several writing challenges earlier in the year didn’t hurt either! I thought about a comparison to completing one’s first half marathon, but I think that ultimately running is more painful and doing it once doesn’t really alleviate the journey on the next few iterations. I’m currently on quantity over quality output mode right now so excuse the non-linear trains of thought in this post.

Although I planned my plot points slightly better this year, there were still significant gaps / murky middle areas that I struggled with. I’d say the book was also 80% done by the 50k mark last year, whereas this year’s is maybe in its first 30-40%. 4thewords has proven to be an invaluable tool for getting the words out once again, and I hope that I can continue to use it to complete this year’s work.

I just read the book Atomic Habits earlier this week and found its message very applicable to writing. “Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.” Although there is much improvement to be had in terms of my plot, narrative structure, character development (lol a lot basically), I would say that the writing itself just feels more natural and free-flowing, and that is a direct result of practicing many days out of the year. I’m excited to continue honing my craft and here’s to many more years of winning NaNo!