My NaNoWriMo Recap

November has come and gone. I'm still here, still standing, if barely.

I did not win NaNoWriMo this year, so no winner's circle t-shirt for me. That doesn't mean that it wasn't a good month as far was writing was concerned. In fact, it was my best month this year!

In the fashion of an engineer, I've taken a look back at the month and gleaned some tidbits to carry forward.

• I wrote 21,810 words. That's only 45 less words than I wrote all of the rest of the year. (Yes, I use a spreadsheet to keep track of daily/monthly/yearly word counts, complete with graphs. What can I say, creating it was a great procrastination vehicle.)

• Key Take-Away: The NaNoWriMo game aspect and the deadline motivated me to get those words on the computer screen. It might be useful to create more "at stake" games and deadlines to keep my words count up outside of NaNoWriMo.
• One of the authors that I admire "buddied" up with me. Talk about a fan-girl moment when I saw that first email.
• Key Take-Away: Socializing with other writers is fulfilling and fun. Time to jump back into networking with those in my writers' circles. (And it's also ok to squee when reading those emails!)
• On some nights, I pushed myself to my limits so I could meet that minimum word count. I learned that I can write late at night after a full day of managing the kids' activities and life and still (mostly) function the next day. Just not too many days in a row.
• Key Take-Away: It's not necessary to push too hard, but I can get more accomplished than I been letting myself so far this year.

There are probably other learnings from my 2014 NaNoWriMo experience, but frankly that's all I'm ready to look for and work on. Knowing that, I plan to regroup, assess priorities, and develop my strategy for another busy month and 2015.