Slowing Down To Speed Up? A Lesson I’m Learning

Here we are, halfway through November! If you’re a writer, you may be familiar with what November means to much of the writing community. It’s National Novel Writing Month!

If you’re not familiar, here is some backstory. NaNoWriMo (both an organization and a challenge) was created in 1999 by a group of friends who dreamed up the lofty goal of writing a novel in just one month. November became the official month for the challenge and it’s been an annual event ever since. The requirements for “winning” NaNoWriMo are pretty simple: a single person must start writing a new novel in November and have at least 50,000 words written by the end of the month. Of course, there are many other goals writers are free to set, like finishing a draft, editing a draft, etc. But the original challenge is 50,000 new words in 30 days.

I first attempted the challenge in 2020 and wrote around 25,000 words. It was my first time trying to write a novel, and I can at least say that I learned a lot. Every experience is a stepping stone! Last year, I was determined to not only attempt the challenge but to achieve the mammoth goal. And I did it! I wrote 50,062 words in November 2023. Fortunately for me, my freelance work was incredibly slow during that time. I give major props to everyone who does NaNo while working a full-time job.

As for this year, things are a little different. NaNoWriMo has had some controversies and many people have chosen to distance themselves from the organization itself. Give it a search if you want to know what has unfolded. Nevertheless, the “vibe” I’ve gotten within the writing community this November is that although things aren’t *exactly* the same with NaNoWriMo, we all still want to write! We’ve come to know November as this really exciting, challenging month when we all come together and work our tails off. I know I was looking forward to November after experiencing it last year!

Anyway, I want to document my experience this year so far and write about a few things I’m learning. I’ve noticed a huge change in myself as a writer between one year ago and now.

Wait, don’t you have three separate notebooks for the same project?

In 2023, I committed to the goal of writing 50,000 words. I had a story planned (you’re allowed to plan, research, and plot before the month as long as you don’t start drafting) and by November 1 I was ready to go. I hadn’t done that type of writing since my first try in 2020, so at first it felt a little strange. But, the good and bad thing about the challenge is that it’s so massive that you’re forced to jump straight in and keep going every day. It can be great because you don’t have the luxury of sitting there slowly perfecting things or staying stuck for very long. These are things that keep so many people from finishing what they started! Perfect is not what a first draft should be, anyway! You simply must get the first crappy version of the story onto the page so that later you can go back and make it better. Until it eventually becomes the story you hoped to tell.

So I am glad that I wrote fast and furiously for a month and got all of those words out. Some of them were good, I think. But there is a downside to this challenge. It can start to feel like you have to write whatever you can think of just to meet the wordcount requirement and make sure you’re on track. I definitely fell victim to this. It wasn’t that I wrote utter nonsense for the sake of meeting the goal, more like I didn’t take time to evaluate my plot as I went along. I didn’t think things through fully (didn’t have time to!) so when all was said and done, I had 50,000 words in my draft but the story itself was lacking. Of course the first draft isn’t going to be spectacular, but there were serious problems with the structure of my story and even the characters. It all sort of fell flat, and I never touched the story again.

I decided it wasn’t a promising enough idea, anyway. I didn’t love it enough to dedicate any more time to it. And that’s okay! I learned so much by just sitting down every day and chipping away at it. I can either look at it as a failure, or I can see it as a much-needed stepping stone on my writing journey. I choose the latter! I’m thankful to have had the experience.

That brings me to this year. I got the idea for a new story in January. I started brainstorming, taking notes, and piecing together characters and events as they came to me. I didn’t act on it right away, but it was in my mind. It was small, but it was there. I carried it around for months, and that felt like enough. I knew this story was special to me, and I didn’t want to rush any part of it. From the beginning, it felt unique and important enough to share with the world someday. It felt worth waiting for.

In May I started writing. A little bit at a time. I kept trying to discover who these characters were and what they were going to say. I wrote around 7,000 words between May and October and along the way I made sure I was happy with how the story was progressing. When November was upon me, I decided this wouldn’t be a get-50k-words-really-quickly month. And I was okay with that!

November 2024 has looked different, but different in the best way. I’m slowly building draft one of this story, and I’m learning to be happy with slow but consistent progress. Slower drafting means a cleaner draft, which I think I’ll thank myself for later when I’m working on the second draft. I’m learning to be okay with adding 0 words to the draft some days and instead fleshing out a character or plot point. Taking time to make sure the story is saying what I want it to say. That kind of progress looks different from the wordcount going up, but it is progress.

So this time around, it sometimes feels like I’m slowing down. In sme ways, I am. But in the ways that matter, it feels more like speeding up. Through drafting slower and with more care, I feel like I’m getting closer to bringing this story to life. Slowing down in one way so I can speed up in another feels right.

This recent statement from my creative journal sums it up:

“Slow and steady may not win the NaNo race but I’m writing a book I’m proud of.”

If you’re writing a book (or creating anything!) just know that challenges can be fun but it’s okay to find your own pace. In fact, I would recommend it. It may seem like there’s too much to do and your project will never make it to the finish line, but keep going.

This is how things are made: with heart, and a little at a time.