NaArWriMo?

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Abstract

towards.)</p><p id="0adc">In the end, I managed to write only 278684 words by the end of the third week of November (my final week of attempting NaNoWriMo). While I have not reached my goal of 35 thousand words and only barely passed the halfway mark of the original challenge, it has been a great learning experience (which I am now putting into this reflection-esque post you are reading now.)</p><p id="bc86">Spending 3 weeks rushing out articles for the word count wasn’t a good idea in general. While it did indeed help me churn out numerous ideas and plausible ways to write different opinions, the written piece is often riddled with errors and had a ton of polishing that needed to be done. While I haven’t tried writing these many articles in such a short period before, I realised that what I have been doing was pretty much the same (except with more time to spare): wreck my brain for ideas, conceptualise it, and rush to write it in the shortest time possible before posting it. This cycle happens weekly and allows me to post weekly content on my blog. (I am pretty sure many other bloggers and writers on Medium fall into this description as well.)</p><p id="7727">While the aforementioned method to write helps guarantee a consistent weekly flow of articles (which is a great thing to have in a blog), it often comes at a cost of quality. The NaArWriMo challenge showed me that to come out with a piece of writing that is genuinely good, a lot of drafting and editing has to go into it (unless you’re naturally gifted — then that’s a different story). Of course, I am not telling you that NaNoWriMo is pointless and useless.

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It forces us to write and put our ideas down into words while we work towards a tangible numerical word count. Who cares if it is full of mistakes, that is what first drafts are all about anyways. As long as we put in enough time to edit afterwards, it will be a worthwhile experience.</p><p id="c364">What I would like to say to all those planning to embark on the NaNoWriMo adventure is that we don’t have to follow the rules. Rules are meant to be broken and it is up to us to define the challenge boundaries. It doesn’t have to be 50 thousand words, it doesn’t have to be November, and it definitely doesn’t have to be restricted to novels only (why not a month of poems?). What is important is to write. To have a target to work towards and to have fun while you write. Writing should be enjoyable and who knows, maybe you’ll surprise yourself with a good piece of writing (after editing heh) that you love at the end of the month.</p><p id="2048">You may also be interested in reading:</p><div id="256e" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/why-i-continue-to-write-even-though-i-get-almost-no-views-94ae4fcf15c2"> <div> <div> <h2>Why I continue to write even though I get almost no views</h2> <div><h3>Reflections about my first month at medium</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*yTHkmUoCqSFhM63f)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

What I learned from spending a month attempting to write 50000 words worth of non-fiction articles.

November is the month that often send multitudes of writers (and to-be-writers) into a writing frenzy as they attempt to complete National Novel Writing Month (where writers aim to write a 50 thousand word draft for a novel in November). While I have tried (and almost succeeding in the process) the challenge before, I wanted to do something different this year. Since I have only recently started my Medium journey, I thought it apt to spend the month writing non-fiction articles.

Personally, other than the fact that 50 thousand words was already challenging, the other difficulty I had to plan for was that I effectively had only 3 weeks to write as I would be overseas (without my laptop /gasps) on the last week of November. Furthermore, November was a busy month for me and I could only write late at night or on weekends. As such, I slightly adjusted the final goal to 35 thousand words instead. (Yes that is right fellow writers feel free to move the 50 thousand words goal. Be it increasing or decreasing the number, what matters is that you have an achievable goal that does not seem too daunting to work towards.)

In the end, I managed to write only 278684 words by the end of the third week of November (my final week of attempting NaNoWriMo). While I have not reached my goal of 35 thousand words and only barely passed the halfway mark of the original challenge, it has been a great learning experience (which I am now putting into this reflection-esque post you are reading now.)

Spending 3 weeks rushing out articles for the word count wasn’t a good idea in general. While it did indeed help me churn out numerous ideas and plausible ways to write different opinions, the written piece is often riddled with errors and had a ton of polishing that needed to be done. While I haven’t tried writing these many articles in such a short period before, I realised that what I have been doing was pretty much the same (except with more time to spare): wreck my brain for ideas, conceptualise it, and rush to write it in the shortest time possible before posting it. This cycle happens weekly and allows me to post weekly content on my blog. (I am pretty sure many other bloggers and writers on Medium fall into this description as well.)

While the aforementioned method to write helps guarantee a consistent weekly flow of articles (which is a great thing to have in a blog), it often comes at a cost of quality. The NaArWriMo challenge showed me that to come out with a piece of writing that is genuinely good, a lot of drafting and editing has to go into it (unless you’re naturally gifted — then that’s a different story). Of course, I am not telling you that NaNoWriMo is pointless and useless. It forces us to write and put our ideas down into words while we work towards a tangible numerical word count. Who cares if it is full of mistakes, that is what first drafts are all about anyways. As long as we put in enough time to edit afterwards, it will be a worthwhile experience.

What I would like to say to all those planning to embark on the NaNoWriMo adventure is that we don’t have to follow the rules. Rules are meant to be broken and it is up to us to define the challenge boundaries. It doesn’t have to be 50 thousand words, it doesn’t have to be November, and it definitely doesn’t have to be restricted to novels only (why not a month of poems?). What is important is to write. To have a target to work towards and to have fun while you write. Writing should be enjoyable and who knows, maybe you’ll surprise yourself with a good piece of writing (after editing heh) that you love at the end of the month.