NaNo by the Numbers
That’s right, my lovelies, not only did I “win” NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for them that’s new here) for the second year in a row, I gave it a thorough trouncing. The goal was to write 50,000 words in 30 days; I wrote 73,292 words.
So, as I said, 73,292 words escaped my fingers this month, that’s 147% of 50 k or an additional 23,292 words. And since I like looking at numbers, let’s do that.
My highest word count day was November 21st, with 4705 words written. My lowest was on November 6th, with 781 words. I averaged 2443 words a day.
The Bracket Draft
Now, is this draft ready for any eyes besides my own to glimpse it? No, definitively no. So much no that you’ll need a second helping of no to fully grasp how not-ready-for-outside-eyes this draft is.
I’ve talked about “the Shitty First Draft” before. I’ve also heard these drafts called “Draft Zero,” and I like that term, but I think I’d prefer to call this a “Bracket Draft” in reference to my habit of putting anything I don’t have time to think about into brackets [like so]. This includes names for secondary characters, bits of research I have yet to do, items of worldbuilding I haven’t pinned down, commentary on my own writing (i.e. [that was a sucky sentence there, go back and fix]), scenes that weren’t in my outline that I know I need to write but sitting down to plot them out now will waste precious time, and so on.
Utilizing this bracket technique allows me to make rapid forward progress through a draft. I don’t stop to look things up, name characters, or read back over what I’ve written to find out what color a character’s eyes are. I keep writing. I write until the draft is done, and by that I mean, once I’ve reached the end of my outline. This means that the plot is pretty much on the page. There’s a beginning, a middle, an end. Most of the characters have something resembling a character arc, but it would be nothing but a mess if anyone else were to read it. A mess taking place in a blank void because I haven’t added anything beyond barebones description to orientate myself.
Usually, once I finish a Bracket Draft, I’ll go back through and try to fill in all the brackets, creating a solid Draft One that I can then send to my writing group for feedback. However, I won’t be doing that right away with this draft. It’s part of a world that I’ve written in before (not a series, but more a series of stand-alone novels and short stories that are in various phases of drafting). So, I intend to look at these two novels and three short stories collectively to make sure that the worldbuilding is consistent, as well as the mechanics and descriptions of the magic system. During this process, I will create a “world bible” for future reference. Only once the “world bible” has been finalized and the story taking place before this one has been revised and sent to beta readers will I sit down to revise this lovely monstrosity. I haven’t blocked out my 2021 writing schedule yet, but I don’t imagine that I’ll get to revising this Bracket Draft into a Draft One until late 2021 or early 2022 if everything goes according to the schedule that I haven’t yet made.
But for now, this story is on the page, the characters exist outside my head, and I can come back to them whenever I’m ready.
If you participated in NaNoWriMo this year, how did it go? Did you “win” or did you find yourself distracted by such pesky real-life events as the holidays, the US election, and this ongoing global health crisis? Regardless of your level of NaNo completion, did you find value in the process?
Thank you, as always, for reading.