What I learned writing a book in a month

or how I learned to buckle down and actually write a damn book.

I fall squarely into the category of people who are "writing a novel."  You know the ones.  They say "I'm writing a novel," and everyone smiles and nods supportively because this person has been writing a novel for most of their post-adolescent life.  By my count I've started over ten novels.  My husband says my obituary will read "author of the twenty-nine most promising first chapters you'll ever read."  Ouch.

First, I was going to write a novel when I finished my B.A., then in grad school with all that spare time, then before we had kids, then before we had another baby....you get the idea.  I'm a novel procrastinator.  I was always getting stuck or not feeling the story or frying a laptop and losing the whole manuscript.

So when NaNoWriMo came along I thought why not?  A little competition might be the best medicine for me, so armed with a few hours a week at the library, a flashdrive, and a lot of coffee, I signed up.  And dear readers, what do you know, I wrote a book.

Ok, I wrote 50,000 words that need a lot of editing, revision, and rewriting.  There's still about 2-3 chapters to write before the story arc is totally complete and everything from plotting to character development to description needs an overhaul.  But I discovered a few things along the way that made me realize I have the ability to stop being the novelist I spoke of before and become a real writer.

1.  I'm a pantser.
I have wasted a lot of effort on outlining and plotting and scene by scene planning.  NaNo forced me to sit down and write.  If I wanted to stay on target to meet the 50k goal, I had to write even if I couldn't force the scene I was supposed to write out.  The result?  I learned that sitting down, picking up where I left off, and writing for 2 hours produced a lot more story than my self-inflicted outline.

2.  A blank page is scarier than one that needs editing.
I have 179 pages of typos, poor word choice and in-text comments to reread and revise and it is so much less scary than the blank page ever was.  A blank page offers you nothing.  A page that needs revision gives you things to build on, ideas that spark more inspiration, and the start to a story.

3.  My inner editor is my worst enemy.  
My inner editor was always keeping my word count down and causing me to give on MSS.  When I stopped fixing typos, chose the word that came to mind over searching for the perfect one and just let go, I wrote like the wind.  Striving for perfection slows you down and inhibits creativity.

So wish me luck.  I have a book to edit!