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On writing

We survived NaNoWriMo again

Sherylyn and I both did NaNoWriMo again this year. The blog—and everything else—suffered, but it’s been fun.

It was easier than both of us expected to make the 50,000 word count, even though Sherylyn missed most of the first week of writing because she was sick. She finished her story at 51,000 words and days to spare. I made the 50,000 words 29 November and then had to keep writing until 4 December and 59,000 words to finish mine.

Both of us ended up with stories we can continue with, which is good, and stories that the other writing partner is happy to work on, which is even better—because every once in a while one of us does write a story that doesn’t interest the other person. That’s never much fun.

Things we learned (or maybe things we knew that were reinforced)

  • Sherylyn still writes much faster than I do
  • Sherylyn’s story is more of an outline, while I tend to focus on one main character and follow his story through, knowing that I’ll go back and fill in the other characters stories post-NaNo
  • We both have pet names that we use all the time, and pet letters that names start with
  • We both have pet bad writing habits that we do all the time. I make my characters ‘jump’ around, for example, while Sherylyn always starts her first draft with conversation (usually gone by around the third draft, much to my relief, but that’s a whole other blog)
  • There was a lot of cross-over in the stories, even though we didn’t let the other writing partner read our story until we were both finished. For example, we both had characters who got sick, both our main characters went on trips and so on. Maybe it shows we’re on the same wavelength when we write. At least we get the same story ideas around the same time.

Last year, after I finished my NaNoWriMo novel it took another six months to polish the story. I don’t know if this one will take as long. I do know there’s still a lot of work to do on it.

All the same, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done so far and looking forward to draft two.

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