IWSG 12/4/2019: Aggressive Writing, the November Way!

When aggressive writing takes over your life, you go with it.
This post was written for the Insecure Writer's Support Group monthly blogging event and brought to you by founder and writer Alex J Cavanaugh. This month Alex has the help of

these awesome co-hosts: Tonja Drecker, Beverly Stowe McClure, Nicki Elson, Fundy Blue, and Tyrean Martinson! Please visit them.

There is an optional question of the month. Instead, I opted to talk about my November writing  experience. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I outlined and also wrote scenes in October in preparation. Less effort went into creating the characters. They were lightly sketched out, on paper. I am horrible at predicting who my characters will become until I write the story. I write minimal and fill in the blanks later.

My project: A (probably) young adult thriller depicting how lives messed up mess up other lives. It has twists and turns, red herrings and clues.  

Here's the gist of my power writing month and what I learned about myself:

• I experienced writer's block, and I NEVER have writer's block. I have only two early morning hours before work where my brain writes clearly. I wrote 39 words that day. I write that many in my sleep most nights. But...
• I made it up during the next two days.
• I wrote more aggressively during the week. On the weekend, my brain rebels against aggressive writing. What's up with that? 
• I MUST have a tentative outline (and did), but honestly this isn't anything new. I'm a list girl. I don't clean my house without an outline.
• Speaking of outlines, I ran out of outline and that's why I believe I did not make my 50,000 goal. My outline ended my writing at 39502 words so I wrote a mysterious prologue, an epilogue and finished around 44,521. This short story writer wants  to write longer pieces, People!
• I loved meeting the daily word goal.
• For me, November is a difficult month to power write. Work becomes busier in both good and bad ways. I also had one November birthday party plus another on December 1. In theory, I used effort and brain cells for that in November. There was also Thanksgiving cooking and eating. Yes, excuses!

I'm not totally disappointed that I did not reach my fifty thousand word goal. In fact, I am inspired to pick another month to do some fast writing, since I have two additional novel ideas. I might even use bleak, wintery, snowstorm driven January since I'm on a roll. I might even name it NaJanWriMo! No?  Not as catchy as the real one?

Anyone else unofficially or officially do the NaNoWriMo? What about your characters. Do you know them early on?


T.