My 2008 NaNoWriMo Experience

nano_08_winner_viking_100x100 50.000 words in one month. It’s my second time, the first time is in 2006. I’m quite proud of myself because this month I also wrapped up my study with my final colloquium. Two big things achieved in November. Not bad 😉

One thing I learned from my years of NaNoWriMo is just never give up. Refuse to give up. I’ve had obstacles too this month, I had to prepare my thesis presentation, which takes me the whole week (preparing, presenting, unwind from the stress of presenting). And then comes the usual devil of procrastination (this year’s suspects: facebook and plurk).

But I’m lucky, I’ve got advantages as well. I’m healthy, I don’t have any other obligations (pledging myself to be a full time author), and I have great support from my husband, my friends, especially fellow NaNoWriMo authors (yes I’m talking about you, wolfie, duckie, mike, miyu) whom I shared lots of word wars with.

In the end, I still have to write half of it in the final week. Here’s my progress graph:

162506 (1) 162506

Lots of reds and just a little green. Red means I didn’t get my target word count for the day but those bright greens means I did exceedingly well (I wrote 7000 words on Friday).

So, yeah, I did it! And now comes the more grueling task of finishing the novel and editing it. Bring it on!!!

(Visited 31 times, 1 visits today)

3 Comments

  1. Azeez January 18, 2010 at 3:04 am

    dear mbak Astrid,

    My name is Aziz and I currently pre-writter who currently struggle to finish my first novel. I just curious with this Nanowrimo program. I knew it from Dee’s blog post, but she didn’t explain anything about it. And I don’t put enough attention with this program’s website.

    Mbak, would you like to explain to me about it? I was excited to take a part, if I was gave chance. Does this prgram only for english novel? what process must we follow to join it?

    Thanks Mbak Astrid. I hope you answer it and it’ll be better if you reply to my email… thank you so much….

    Regard, from Aziz in Padang, Indonesia…

    Reply
    1. astrid January 18, 2010 at 8:58 am

      Hi Azeez,

      It’s quite simple to join NaNoWriMo. All you have to do is register on their website (www.nanowrimo.org) and write 50.000 words in November. You don’t have to write in English, you can write in any language you want. Indonesian, Javanese, French, Swedish, German, Klingon, whatever… It doesn’t matter at all, unless the language chosen has no space between the words. Then it might be a problem ;).

      Unfortunately, NaNoWriMo is only in November. So if you’d like to join, you have to wait. There’s some other similar WriMos (Writing Months) community… I don’t remember the link, but you could easily google for it. Then again, why wait till November to finish your novel? Do it now!

      Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.