IWSG Blog Post - National Novel Writing Month

The awesome co-hosts for the November 2 posting of the IWSG are Diedre Knight, Douglas Thomas Greening, Nick Wilford, and Diane Burton!

November 2 question - November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

I participated in NaNoWriMo last year and wrote the entire first draft of Heart of a Hero in one month. I was so proud of myself! I wrote one chapter per weekday, taking off weekends and holidays. It sounded good on paper to write 80,000 words so quickly, but it caused problems. When I read the completed draft in December, I realized how daunting my edits would be. There were big problems with structure, characters, plot, you name it. The pressure of NaNoWriMo caused me to push through when I should have paused to address the issues. Trying to edit such a mess of a manuscript was painful and took much longer than the slow-and-steady approach I used on my first book. The experience has made me swear I will NEVER do NaNoWriMo again. In the end, I did create something I'm proud of, but I wish I'd gotten there a better way.

For book three in my trilogy, I want to try a two-month process. I'll alternate every other day between writing and editing. That way, I'll have breathing room to correct problems as I find them. After Heart of a Hero is released on November 7, I'll get started and see if my new approach works for me!​