In mid October, I decided to take part in the November novel writing challenge, which is an event that many writers take part in. The challenge is to write the first draft of a novel in the month of November. Though my last novel took me eleven months to write, I was confident that with a proper deadline, I would be able to reach this goal. I plotted the novel, made my daily goals, and planned everything – admittedly far more than I usually do when it comes to my writing – and on the first of November, I began.

Flash forward a month. I have reached the end of November with approximately a fourth of my goal, and I want to talk about that. As I have recently been working on re-adjusting my mindset on a lot of things, a big part of that has been giving myself grace when I don’t meet the (often impossible) standards that I set for myself. Was it realistic for me to go from writing a book in a year to writing a book in a month? Maybe not. And understanding that made it a lot easier on me when I didn’t meet my goal.

I reached about 12,000 words this month. Not exactly what I had planned for, not even close. But this is around two times the monthly progress that I made while writing my first novel. While I would have loved to have a finished first draft as we enter December, I can still look back at this month and be proud of what I accomplished.

So what did I learn?

• Setting goals is important, even if we don’t reach them. Even though I realized fairly early on in the month that I would not be reaching my objective, it still gave me motivation to keep pushing myself to get as close as I could.
• You cannot rush your writing. This book wasn’t ready to be finished this month, and it would have turned out very poorly if I had tried to force it out. Writing is a process that is different for everyone, and it seems that for me, it’s important to allow my plot and characters time to marinate and develop at a natural rate. I love being put on a deadline, but there are certain times where it’s more important for me to listen to the story than to push it out.
• Every novel is different. When I wrote The Reaper, I wrote it from beginning to end, with little to no preparation. With Laced, I did a fair amount of plotting beforehand, and also found myself doing the majority of my writing starting in the second act of the novel. I made excellent progress on the parts that I was working on, even though I did it completely differently than I did with The Reaper. Changing up your process not only helps with productivity, it is also vital for the creative aspect of writing a novel.
• Sometimes you have to put your own life first. I’ve had a lot going on this month – mostly good, but a few struggles as well – that have all resulted in me needing to spend a little less time writing. Through this busy, challenging, and exciting month, I have needed to take more time to take care of myself, as well as savoring every beautiful moment that has happened this November. Writing is something that I love very deeply, but in the end, this world is more important than my fictional ones.

I don’t see this month as a failure in any capacity. I tried something new, I worked hard on it, and I learned more about my process as an author. I am so excited to share more about Laced with you as I continue to explore the new and exciting world of this novel!