Nano Report 2023

It’s December 1st. Another Nano season has come and gone. This year was strange in ways good and not-as-good. So, for your consideration, here’s my Nano roundup.

First off, where I ended up for the year. As reported last time, I crossed the 50K line on the 20th. I had hoped to finish the draft, but after shoehorning in a subplot, because my characters had appeared in my romance novel from February, and this was a prequel for some of them, I got lost. Or, not so much lost, but wasting a lot more time on that subplot than was probably necessary. I started to realize what I needed to do to tie it back into the larger plot of things, but I started to run out of steam. If I’m honest, the only reason I kept going was due to the “update every day” and “write at least par (1667) every day” badges on the Nano site. That and wanting to use all the prompts, since I was the only one who ended up using them every day.

Nano official word count: 71,902. What I ended up with to get the draft to a reasonable stopping point shortly after midnight: 72,186.

Secondly, I was far more social this year. I think that was in part because I was in charge of the prompts, so that gave me an “in” to interact with more people. But there were plenty of people who tried to rope me into conversations online and at events, so that aided my standard introversion to branch out more. Plus, oddly enough, having friends who were literary guests, had a booth in the vendor hall, and were giving a panel during Grand Rapids Comic Con brought some early energy and fun, too. But the big event for our region, the Day of Knockout Noveling (DOKN) saw me dressed as a cheerleader (with skirt) cheering people on, and that was another avenue into the hearts of my fellow writers. Taking a walk on that beautiful day, doing some office yoga, and doing high kicks sealed the deal.

There are new writing groups forming, and potentially new members in mine. It’s a transformative time, though I’ve realized I’ve been aimlessly wandering a bit too much when it comes to my writing of late. So, as I hinted in the last post, I’m not going to focus on writing every day for the rest of the year. I hope to make a dent in the memoir to finally finish my romantic history at some point, and maybe get my Nano novel draft finished, but that might wait for a Camp Nano event or something.

Whatever ends up happening, my writing continues in earnest (but not in Ernest, knowhutimean). And in case this ends up being the last post of 2023, I wish you all literary blessings as you enter 2024. Maybe even some future publishing credits? Hey, it could happen.