How NaNoWriMo Led Me To My Writing Process

This is the first November in twenty years that I haven’t taken on the National Novel Writing Month challenge (aka, write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.) The organization that promoted this event, and connected writers who were crazy enough to participate, folded in the spring. I was worried that November without NaNoWriMo would feel odd, dull, even lifeless. But I’ve developed a drafting process inspired by my NaNoWriMo experiences, and it’s fun.

The reason I showed up for NaNoWriMo all those years (putting in the effort to write at least 50,000 words each time) is because sitting down and writing whatever comes into my head works much better for me than planning ahead. Many, probably most, writers know their stories before they start. They create characters, choose settings, and outline their story before they start actually writing the book. When I do that, I have serious problems. 

I chase my tail and dive into endless research “getting ready to write,” with the result that I just make lots and lots of notes. I’m too busy working out all the details and making sure I’m doing things right to write a draft. When a miracle occurs and I manage to outline my story, my Inner Writer is completely uninterested. 

“What do you mean write a story? I did that already. See? It’s right there!” My Inner Writer points to our outline and then runs off to play. Unfortunately, if she’s not on board for a project, the writing does not happen.

To people who plan, writing in order to discover a story probably sounds nuts. But writing to think (instead of thinking, then writing) works much better for me. I always start with a very basic idea — a situation or character — and I start writing a scene with that in mind. As I write, my Inner Writer sneaks into the room and starts reading over my shoulder. She’s constantly interrupting me with her ideas, which she insists are better than whatever I just wrote. She doesn’t like trying to think things up ahead of time, but loves to criticize what I’m doing in the moment. She cannot resist offering improvements.

The thing is, her ideas are improvements — huge ones. They’re always better than what I’ve written so far, so I change the story to include them. 

Only recently have I heard the term “discovery writing” applied to this writing technique. Out of the thousands of books on how to write a novel, only a few talk about doing it this way, probably because it’s hard to tell someone else how to do it. You just have to try it. “Discovering my characters and their story while I write” describes my process perfectly.

The exciting thing is that, thanks to my recent reading, I’ve adapted my NaNoWriMo training (which is word-count oriented) to embrace some of the advice given by these other discovery writers. I’m getting a richer, more layered, and better story as a result. The best part? I’m having fun. Insane amounts of fun.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sad NaNoWriMo is gone. But I am also grateful it opened the door to the fun writing process I use today.