Deep in my heart, I always wanted to write fantasy. But I thought I couldn’t pull it off (for a variety of reasons, including: a) flowery prose isn’t my jam, and b) I used to believe I would need the grandiloquence of a 19th-century poet to write a fantasy book).
Turns out, I was wrong.
And so the fantasy NaNo WIP I started writing without knowing where I was heading (nor what I was doing) has now become a delightful, thrilling obsession I have nonstop fun with. It is so important to me I’d rather be working on it than editing my finished manuscript.
That’s a dangerous situation; thus I’ll have to force myself to 1) stop blogging instead of working, and 2) stick to the schedule: train time is for the NaNo WIP, and free time at home is for editing the manuscript. It has already proven difficult, but I will handle it.
Now, the lessons I’ve learned during NaNo so far:
- NaNo forces you not to edit as you write. In doing so, it forces you to move forward. Thank you forever, Nano, for that is a skill I didn’t have.
- Reaching the 1,6k daily word count is possible, even though it is taxing. I got used to the pressure and the schedule, and those two habits are positively impacting my work.
- Passion projects are the only projects I wanna work on: this story is a wild ride, with an ensemble cast of ten characters, set across different countries and worlds—and I’m helplessly in love with it.
- I do my best work in silence and isolation, without listening to the naysayers, without wasting time, without overthinking it.
- NaNo is not the moment for worrying about style, but I can’t get lazy with my grammar just because I must be fast. And that exigence pays off: I’m writing faster, and better.
- The pain and frustrations that Book 1 brought are the lessons that allow me to write a superior Book 2.
Present and future me would like to raise a glass to our past self, the one who took the decision to test the limits of our self-discipline and forced us all to achieve the seemingly impossible: completing a new first draft before the end of 2018. And what’s more: a fantastic one.