Writing A Novel Draft in A Month
In November 2022, I took a part again in National Novel Writing Month (or more popularly, shortened: NaNoWriMo). The goal is: write 50,000 in 30 days of a novel. Many authors tackle it yearly. The official stats for 2022 says that: “51,670 writers met goals to become NaNoWriMo winners, including 21,326 young writers.” The point isn’t for it to necessarily be good, it’s just to get it done. I succeeded by tackling a draft of the sequel to “Hope Runners of Gridlock” by writing 51,591 words!
👁
I first attempted this in November 2021, but only got to ~25,200.
Why?
Writing takes many forms, and the goal of writing at least ~1,700 words a day, every day, for a month tests a different kind of writing muscle. It’s not a marathon, but a sprint. It forces you to think differently about how you write and what you write.
In tackling this sequel, I’ve been thinking about this story actively for quite some time. Although I had ideas of what the sequel was going to be when I published the first book, I’ve been actively thinking and re-thinking it since mid-2021.
By writing fast to a deadline and not editing myself as I write, I wanted to see what the outcome would be. In the run-up, I thus spent a considerable time doing some plotting, establishing what I wanted the core stories to be. This is in part a desire to figure out a process where I can write novels without it taking too much of my time. The best way to write (for myself) is still debateable. Do you write and re-write full-time and plot as you go, or do you plot before-hand and only actively write for a much shorter period?
For example, I started thinking about “Hope Runners of Gridlock” in 2018, and wrote it from June 2019 to October 2020. It was my primary focus. If you want to read about the process and what I learned, I wrote about it after I published the novel. The story formed as I wrote, went through several drafts, and even a few weeks before release went through small plot revisions. 16 months of active writing.
For the sequel, I’ve spent on-off plotting through down-times of my life (like on walks, travels, etc) since mid-2021. And, I’ve spent probably 2-3 months of active writing various drafts.
Book 1, thus: 16 months of active writing (for a debut novel).
Book 2, thus (so far): ~18 months of passive writing/plotting (maybe 1-2hrs a week on average) + 2-3 months of which were active months of writing.
Now, during the passive months, I’m still doing other active work. So, if I would compare the two processes, so far, book 2 seems kinder on myself. When I write, I want write with full focus. But, I’m not sure if extensive pre-plotting to save myself time actually works, because in writing I find plotholes and new avenues to explore that I didn’t see when I was plotting.
So, in part: NaNoWriMo in 2022 was another attempt at seeing what it feels like if I pre-plot and then actively write a draft quickly. The active writing part is thus much quicker.
Here’s what I learned:
In some respects, it’s fun. By writing fast to a deadline, you can’t really fumble around. The story HAS to pull itself ahead even if your brain lags behind what your fingers want to put down. If you don’t know where it’s going and you are a bit lost, then you have to just let the characters take the reign.
It helps you keep the story simpler in general. I’d say it hones ones ability to spot what the story is actually about. It helps you to stop overthinking and let the story run by itself. You are not writing at your most beautiful, but you are not holding yourself back either. You become a conduit to an alternate reality and just channel it into words, even if it’s not the best you could do. You write exposition for fun even if it doesn’t drive the story forward.
It’s indulgent writing and it’s great. It’s writing without inhibition.
That being said, it definitely gets difficult the longer you go. You have to really make sure the starting foundations are strong. When you run out of the gates at sprint, you can easily tire yourselves out. Story threads start hanging loose and you spend more time writing duck-tape to ensure it doesn’t fall apart.
But, perhaps the most useful outcome was that I realised that this draft along with the 2021 draft attempt is not what I want the story to be. In some ways, you hype the story in your head, and it’s only when fingers meet the keyboard and you see the draft in its full extent that you realise it doesn’t work. That’s why I’m not sure that my current style of writing lends itself to pre-plotting to save myself time. Do enough to set the guardrails, but don’t spend too much time on it. For me, when I get into the details, the map forms itself.
And so, the core benefit is true: by writing fast, you learn how to strip away what the story should not be about. So after I finished the draft, I let my darlings die (as the famous quote goes) and went back to the storyboard.
How do I realise it doesn’t work?
One key thing I’ve realised in my writing is that the following pattern occurs:
I want something to happen.
I invent a way for that to work.
This causes more problems.
To patch the new problems, new solutions end up feeling like you are duck-taping the characters and the world into a forced narrative for the sake of the first problem you had.
Here’s an example that’s not related to the sequel or story:
Characters are on a space-ship in a post-money society. Everything is provided for them. I want a twist where a character appears later, unexpectedly. So, I put the character in a cryo-chamber and they would wake up later. But who gets to be in cryo-chambers and who gets to live longer? What if they had to pay for it? That can work. But this was a post-money society. How do they then earn the right? What if it was through a time-bank system based on goodwill? That can work, but then the original society that led this character to the cryo-chamber wouldn’t work. etc etc etc
So, the longer it goes, the more it feels like there is a gotcha upon gotcha. I don’t recall where I read this, but good advice that I remember is that one should try to keep the leaps of faith as low as possible in fantasy/sci-fi. When you work in certain genre tropes, you could get away with more (eg, laser guns + lightspeed travel + aliens talking to each other easilly, all together in space opera). I agree with that, but it’s not also about asking a reader to believe, but also for the sake of the story, it keeps it simpler.
If there’s too much, it’s going to take a while to make it all fully palatable and coherent. In “Hope Runners of Gridlock”, for example, I had people commenting that they find it unbelievable that a city like that could survive without outside help. It wasn’t explained well enough. Now, obviously, I could just add additional exposition to make it all make sense, but then you could be taking away from the core story. So, it’s really about keeping the exposition as low as possible such that the characters can shine. A lesson learned.
In a way, it feels like comparing heliocentrism to geocentrism:
A story that had to invent new exposition to explain its plot and character choices as it goes along ends up looking like geocentrism: you put your plot in the middle of the story. The characters revolve around it like drunks.
Getting that story to a heliocentric story, a story where the world is understandable and at service of the characters is doable, but hard.
So, when faced with a draft that ends up looking like a piece of spaghetti, it’s easier to cut it off, remove characters, and change exposition to be simpler. Get rid of gotchas and gotchas and gotchas until you find yourself with a good story told well. There’s a simpler story here, and you need to find it.
That’s still currently the goal for me as a writer. I first want to get to a point where I can tell a good story, well. I don’t have to invent a new genre or some new format. I just want to make people feel. It’s like making a great new song in a genre you love. If you master that, then maybe you can plow ahead and create new genres. This is not either/or, of course. But, for me, the act of storytelling is the oldest creative tradition there is. There’s so much to learn from just mastering the basics. When I think about a story and I ask myself whether it’s good or not, I put myself in the audience around a fire and wonder if a local, charismatic elder regaling it over a fire would be able to do it justice.
So, the sequel had gone through two drafts. I learned a lot, and I have a very great template for a third draft. I’m excited.
Witness The Draft
But wait… There’s more. As a part of doing NaNoWrimo, I took the chance to create a daily log that I committed to a smart contract on Ethereum. For each day, it stored the timestamp, the day, the word count, and a sentence from the day’s writing.
It’s stored here: https://etherscan.io/address/0xfde89d4b870e05187dc9bbfe740686798724f614
When you fetch the logs, this is what is returned in the format: [timestamp, day, word count, sentence]
[1667349683,1,4821,the edge of their known world, ]
[1667433371,2,7807,her dream felt out of focus, ]
[1667526563,3,9447,the truth matters, ]
[1667613227,4,10859,if you did it again, ]
[1667668607,5,12286,flickering and glitching, ]
[1667783747,6,14109,the bandwidth in your dreams, ]
[1667873795,7,14665,seemingly at random, ]
[1667964863,8,15742,trails shot through the thick glass, ]
[1668047303,9,17401,dating advice, ]
[1668134687,10,18801,marketplace of companions, ]
[1668214703,11,20940,randomly dance in their eyes, ]
[1668308579,12,22690,the current comes and the current goes, ]
[1668391715,13,24487,your freedom right now is through the truth, ]
[1668477863,14,26197,the singularity is coming, ]
[1668569255,15,27899,whiskey against the tank, ]
[1668653099,16,29739,the obviousness of it, ]
[1668737699,17,32257,an existential war by civilizations, ]
[1668807515,18,33666,her mothers bracelet, ]
[1668914531,19,35338,process has been killed, ]
[1668996791,20,37531,in the middle of all this, ]
[1669084403,21,40042,she ran, ]
[1669170503,22,43152,why am I dead, ]
[1669257215,23,44610,time for a nap, ]
[1669343183,24,45665,you dont have a choice i forgive you, ]
[1669430891,25,46952,sincerely hopeful, ]
[1669515395,26,47312,here with me, ]
[1669601675,27,49143,humanity for anomaly reintegration and protection, ]
[1669690799,28,49799,give me time, ]
[1669776995,29,50470,have you or anyone you know, ]
[1669863455,30,51591,hope is a choice, ]
I then created an NFT collection that directly consumes these logs on-chain into a dynamic art project that allows collectors to witness other pieces in the collection (open and closing the eyes).
It is thus a fusion of an experiment in provenance, the creative process, art, and novel social dynamic NFTs.
I’m publishing this collection through my business that will hopefully help fund eventual post-production of the novel.
Check it out here: https://www.untitledfrontier.studio/blog/witness-the-draft
