How I failed (and still almost won) NaNoWriMo

In November this year, I set out to write a nonfiction ebook during NaNoWriMo, instead of my usual novel.  I've been doing NaNoWriMo every year since 2006, plus camp, and I've won several of those along the way.  I felt it was time to do something different... and perhaps use the motivational burst of NaNo to make headway on one of the many projects that have been hanging out on the back burner while I focus on client work.

There were some lessons to be learned by doing nonfiction instead of fiction, but overall I think it was a win for me -- even if it wasn't a win by the conventional method (getting to 50,000 words in November).

Lessons learned in NaNoWriMo 2014

NaNoWriMo is a new experience every year.  Whether I win or lose, there is always a lesson to be learned in it.

Considering I still have more than 40k to go until the goal, and there are only three days left until the end of the month, I think I will be losing this year.  I feel this year, though, as I felt after NaNoWriMo 2012,  that I learned as much (if not more) from my failure as I do when I win.

Working the write-ins

I've been trying to go to a lot of write-ins this year during NaNoWriMo, more than I usually do.  I was originally planning on not working on client work at these write-ins, but sadly that hasn't always been the case.  However, I've made sure to always work on my NaNo project for at least a little during the write-in.

Feast

Ironically, since it's been the first two weeks of NaNoWriMo, I've been super busy lately -- my freelance work picked up right at the beginning of the month.  With lots of deadlines, I've been struggling with keeping up on both my NaNo project and my blogs.  Nonfiction is proving to be much harder to write for NaNo than fiction, so even when I do get time (or make time) to write, it's slower going.  As I tell my NaNo friends, it makes a difference that I can't just make something up when I get stuck!

NaNoWriMo 2014: Making progress

After several days of not working much on my NaNoWriMo project, I finally made some progress.  I wrote a little over a thousand words on Tuesday, and another thousand or so yesterday.  My progress both days occurred largely at and after write-ins, of course.

Write-ins and resolutions

There's a lot of write-ins planned this year.  The Denver region of NaNoWriMo has gotten quite large and active since I first started participating in 2006, and it's amazing to see the amount of activity on the forums and all the write-ins that get scheduled.

Aside from the Friday write-ins that I plan every year, this year I also plan on attending write-ins on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and Saturday afternoons.  There are sometimes spontaneous or one-off write-ins that happen, too, and I am going to join a friend for one or two of those this weekend as well.

Freelancing fail and NaNoWriMo's slow start

Last week was a rough week, and not very productive.  My mom moved and so I spent a lot of time helping her, putting off freelancing work as well as outlining this year's project for NaNoWriMo.  As a result, I had to cram to get all of my freelance work done by the deadline over the weekend, and I also spent my writing time at the NaNo kickoff party outlining my project instead.

NaNoWriMo: What to write?

The NaNoWriMo website and forums were finally reset.  They usually do this a little earlier, to give us time to start planning and posting write-in details, but this year they ran a little late.  No matter -- everyone has still been busy in the interim, and once the forum was updated, it turned out we already had a kickoff party and a bunch of write-ins planned for our area.

I'm so excited NaNo is coming again, but this leaves me with the burning question: What am I going to write?