Young Writers Society

What have you learned during NaNo?

1. You'll get exhausted. You'll get unmotivated. But you'll also get hyper and motivated so get over it.

2. Always have a backup plan is case your main characters start get annoying but you don't want to kill them off.

3. Music can be the life or death of you. If you're on a roll, keep it off. If you find yourself stuck or wanting to give up, put it on.

4. The only people that are relevent are your characters and your other NaNo friends; everyone else is just going to distract you and/or tell you NaNo is stupid.

5. People really don't understand the words "I'm working on my NaNo." They seem to think "Well, she must still want someone to talk to then." which is sometimes wrong.

6. I can actually write 3k in around ten hours.

7. Get ahead. So what if you reach the suggested word count? Keep writing. That way you have a day to slack off if you work hard enough.

8. It's possible to survive the first night of NaNo without Halloween candy but very, very hard.

9. Family can be a good thing during NaNo; they can be proud of you for working so hard. Or they can be a bad thing and tell you that your grades had better not go any lower and yell at you to take a break.

10. I like having the right to act crazy this month; it's pure awesomeness.

11. NaNoWriMo.org being down= torture because you can't update your word count and see how much better/worse you're doing than everyone else.

12. Drama and description are extremely good for word count, no matter how boring they are to write.

13. Dialogue can be a good word count booster too.

14. NaNo is a good excuse to not go anywhere.

15. Sleep deprivation is normal.

-alwaysawriter

Don't do a novel that needs loads and loads of research so historical fiction is out next time or for me at least. NaNo is good fun whether you win or lose. And it all depends on the individual writer as to what they are proud of so setting a goal of 30k or even 20k should make a person no less delighted to have acheived it. I think next year there should be a YWS custom NaNo running alongside the usual one for those less ambitious or crazily editorial members =)

Mm I think next time I need to plan better, so my story ends at least near 50,000 words. Also, I won't use a project I've been wanting to do for ages because that needs more care and attention in a way than something that's been thought about less.

Also I've learned stamina!

+ Just get the darn thing written! -- I've had this project in mind and wanted to write it for so long, and I finally got the darn thing out on paper. I feel so good.

+ Don't stress about it. -- I stress about a lot of things, but I didn't here and I felt so good the entire month of November, even as the rest of my life was pressing down on me, on top of my novel.

I had so much fun with this. It reminded me of how much I really do love writing, when I had sort of been taking it for granted before.

Can't wait for next November!

~GryphonFledgling

I agree with Kitty, stories that involve a lot of research suck and they drain your time and then they make you start another novel and another and...OMG...I'm just glad the madness is over!

P.S. Get all the sleep you can in October and start planning earlier.

~Angie

I've learned that a deadline makes people do amazing things.

And also that hot chocolate is my version of coffee.

Hmm... i've learnt to jot down seperate ideas for stories, and leave them at that. Beginning new stories apart from NaNo do not help!!! I could've easily gone 100,000 + but noooo i decided to abandon nano halfway through for a new story then had to rush to catch up.

*slaps self*

- I can write 23k in 9 hours. Nine hours of insanity! *crazy grin*
- I can actually keep writing something if I really want to, even if I feel like a complete idiot for doing it.
- Writing isn't all that hard. Writing well is, but that can always come afterwards.
- Not everything I write has to be a masterpiece the first time around: I have permission to suck at least for the first draft.
- Never, ever try to answer someone who asks you what your novel is about. It gets really complicated, really fast, and you sound like a complete moron. Especially when you're not entirely sure yourself what you're blathering about anyway.
- Family and pets must be locked out of the room while writing is occuring. They talk/bark/make too much noise and it's bad for concentration.
- 6am is a perfectly normal time to go to sleep.
- Outlines, while necessary, eventually end up becoming useless about half way through the novel, when the characters take over. This is actually a good thing, because by that point you realize that you have no idea what you're doing anyway.
- Writing is addictive.

Never write a story with characters that you can't kill because they're already dead. Takes all the fun out of it.

-.-

Teague
x

I've learned that making your antagonist into a protagonist, isn't a good thing to do in one chapter...

Letting your father read all the chapters only to have him change it into a satire that doesn't make sense. -- don't do that!

Um, I don't know.


---Jon---

Oh i learnt at 2am in the morning, while full of enough sugar, my characters do crazy things that somehow fit in perfectly

6am is a perfectly normal time to go to sleep

I agree so much. Though of course that means 2 days at least to readjust my body clock. Was worth it.

And other than that i learnt is i am dreading next November!

I loved NaNo. The first two weeks, I forgot about the problems I was (and still am) having with one of the people I've known for years. He told me that NaNo is retarded so it made me even more determined to get farther. We weren't messaging back and forth through most of it anyway so I let my anger run its course through my NaNo. In the end, however, it was all my confusion due to him that made me stop.

16. Don't let problems with friends and jerks interfer with your NaNo unless you're going to put them in your NaNo to kill them off.

-always

What I learned? START EARLIER!

Ooh i also learnt that keeping a sleeping schedule (just enough hours sleep, bed and wake up same time the same) i can cope late nights much easier by the end of the month.

Schedules rock!

I learned 4 things:

1. Never make a YWS account in the middle of November.
2. Never Start a NaNo in the middle of the month.
3. Candy and coffee are a perfect subsitite for Sleep and food.
4. NEVER EVER put ten pixie sticks in coffee. I couldn't sit for three days!