This Year: Why My NaNoWriMo Is Going So … Great

Nanowrimo first week update:

Taking a short break from writing my NaNoWriMo project for an update and access how I’m feeling. Overall, I feel like this year’s NaNo is going fantastic. I would have to say it’s the best NaNo experience I’ve had, and I’ve been doing it since 2008.

Why is it going so well this year?

I would have to say the number one reason is planning. I took advantage of the Preptober concept and spent October (and to be honest most of September) planning my story. This includes developing characters, settings and scenes.

I’m surprised at the connections made.

That being said, I didn’t over plan. I deliberately allowed for discovery. While writing, I still developed the way my characters speak, dress and act. I’ve had some surprises. While I won’t go into detail, I’ve made some connections — brilliant connections — that I didn’t see until I was writing a scene. For example, the protagonist had stolen intellectual property from a friend and claimed it as his own. He is helping another character who had a friend who stole her intellectual property, something totally different. Wait a minute. She calls him out on it. That connection just fell into place days after I had started writing the story.

I’m also surprised at how I missed a plot hole.

While I’ve made some great connections in the plot of my story, I also wrote myself into some plot holes. Why would these characters turn against the person who they work for? What’s the reason? I thought about it and came up with a (what I think is) an excellent solution. There are probably other plot holes that haven’t occurred to me yet, but I hope to find them. To me, that’s the fun of NaNoWriMo.

But with fantasy, I can make up the rules to fill in the holes.

My story is an urban fantasy, so I find it easy to make a rule for the magic system as a solution. I just need to write a note to myself to casually show this rule in an earlier scene so it doesn’t look like some events just conveniently happen, A deus ex machina, if you will.

In a few days, NaNoWriMo 2021 will be at its midpoint and I feel like I’m going stronger than ever. Best wishes to everyone else participating this year.