How NANOWRIMO 2020 Went for Me!

I WON NANOWRIMO.

Okay. I couldn’t build that up with any kind of suspense. I’m too excited.

Oh my gosh, can I say just how crazy and exciting this has been?

I wrote 50,223 words in 30 days.
And I did it while working a full time job.
And I didn’t write every single day.

I took days for my mental health. I took days to spend with my family. I was a better writer for it on the days I was writing.
I encourage you to check out my stats page on the official NanoWriMo website! You can see I didn’t write every day. I sometimes wrote two times in the same day but I took days off. Sometimes even three days in a row.

I want to start off by congratulating everyone who participated in NanoWriMo and managed to write something. Whether you hit the 50k goal or not. Way to go! Congratulations on getting words down on the page. That’s amazing! This is what it is all about!!

This whole process has been really unique for me. I usually try to write every day, and I feel like I typically hit my monthly word count. However, my monthly word count goal is 20-25k depending on the month. Sometimes on busier months it’s like 15k.
Doing Nano, has really changed my perspective on how much I really CAN write in a month.

I wasn’t even stressed out doing this.

I even switched my plans around and let life happen naturally. I wrote when it felt good to write. And it made all the difference.

I mean, were there days where I couldn’t form a sentence. Of course. And what did I do? I wrote what I could, took a break, and came back to it. If I still couldn’t write to save a life, I closed the laptop. It could wait until the next day.

Lets talk about mindset:

I manifested 50k. I spoke it out into the universe that I was going to write 50,000 words this month. I knew I needed to put in the effort, and write but I wanted it to also be organic and fun. I wanted this to be a good experience for me for a couple of reasons.

1. I value my mental health above everything else. I refused to stress myself out over a self imposed writing challenge.
2. Writing is my passion and I love it. I refused to turn it into something I would dread doing.

So I took it seriously. But not in the “you have to do this because you told people you would, and you don’t want to fail” type of way.

At the end of the day if I didn’t meet the goal I set for myself, and I know I tried my best, then fine.

I would then need to take some time to evaluate my process, figure out what wasn’t working for me, and hope for better next time.

This was my first time doing NanoWriMo. Like you, and anyone else doing it, we had high hopes and were likely nervously excited about this project.

Like anything in life, you will get better at it, the more you do it.

So don’t be mad at yourself if you didn’t perform exactly how you thought. You can adjust and make changes better now that you have some experience to go with it. Everything in life is a learning experience.

Things I personally learned:

One thing I had to cut out is videos and blog posts. I was doing great in October with website editing, filming, photos, social media, and my website. Well, I just didn’t have the energy or time to dedicate to making a video and blog post every week. I still made a blog post, but a lot goes into filming and editing. I decided it was more important to focus on the writing. I could jump back into videos when November was over.

Food.
I think next time I will meal prep better. My husband and I usually take turns cooking. I have to say he definitely helped pick up the slack on this one. We also ate out more than intented. So now I will be running an extra mile or two, and next year working out a meal planning system!!

Overall I am really happy with how everything went. I think I can attribute a lot of that to taking the time in October to properly plan everything out. I didn’t stick to my schedule exactly as I planned. But it ended up working out better for me to feel out my mood and how I felt.

And also what I felt like writing. I will say I did NOT write in order. I dont recommend writing a chapter if you would rather write another one. Inspiration is fickle. So if you can feel a scene so bad you can almost imagine you’re there right this moment, yourself. WRITE THE DAMN SCENE. I cant tell you how many times I felt like I needed to just “stick to the plan and write in order” and the writing down the line was never the same.

So, write what you feel like writing. It will save you from having writers block later on down the road.

I would absolutely love to hear how Nanowrimo went for you.
Please drop down in the comments and tell me. Or pop on over to my Instagram and we can chat there!!

Thanks for reading.

Taylor