On completing NaNoWriMo
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009National Novel Writing Month is over, and I’ve won for the third year in a row. That is such a fantastic feeling! Even if you’re not a writer, I highly recommend doing NaNoWriMo at least once. Being given a deadline might be the thing that makes you actually do it.
And if you are a writer, I can’t think of a better exercise. I learn so much every year, and this year was the best yet.
I learned about focus, only reading or watching things that had to do with my story, mostly research about all the different risks to human civilization since this year’s novel was apocalyptic (of course). And therefore I learned a lot about climate change, hurricanes (especially Katrina), epidemics, and what will happen to the earth when all or most of the humans are dead. I’ll review some of the documentaries and books I’ve been going through, it’s fascinating stuff. Anyway, by keeping my head in the story, something was germinating all the time, and I never ran out of ideas.