The End?

It is officially the last day of Nanowrimo and I am pleased to announce I am a "Winner" in that I completed the task of writing 50k words of a novel in 30 days. I am nowhere near the end of my novel, but that's not the point. I want to share with you, dear readers, what I have discovered over the last thirty days that I missed last year when I gave up after 18k words.

It is not enough to like your story, you need to love it. You need to be maddened with not knowing how things turns out for your characters. It will drive you from one word to the next when you have no idea what's going on.

You need to create a writing space. With whatever relaxes you and helps you focus. For me it was candles and a Pandora station full of Qntal and Loreena McKennitt. When I had both of those I found I could write for hours.

Set aside time. Since I recently moved and realized that with an added 1 1/2 hours to my daily commute I had to be more strict with my time in order to fit in the things I was used to. Scheduling was the key. I schedule workouts into my days, and time to cook dinner so adding writing time became one of those things I scheduled.

Having support is crucial. My fiance made sure to be busy when I wanted to write so I wasn't tempted to join him in other activities. He also cooked me breakfast one morning when I was writing. The best support came from him when I was stuck and needed to talk out the next section of the book. I was lucky to have a great source of trivia in him that I utilized the utmost.

Reminding yourself the backspace and erase button do not exist at all during nanowrimo. What backspace? Forward, forward. Something I hope I can keep up in the coming weeks as I try to find the same motivation to finish.

Lastly, is simply wanting to. No amount of prep and planning with help if you don't really want to be writing. If there are other things you want to be doing more, you will never write. You might become a great musician or basketball player instead. Nothing wrong with that. But if you don't have the burning desire to chain yourself to a computer then don't do it because it's dragging yourself through emotions and feelings, dredging up your past to understand your characters and it's hard work.

So before I embark on Part two of my book I am rewarding myself. I threw together a bottle of garlic infused vodka earlier tonight that I will enjoy next week, hopefully after I have completed another couple thousand words on my novel.

Happy Writing!