Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting!
Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.
The awesome co-hosts for the November 1 posting of the IWSG are Tonja Drecker, Diane Burton, MJ Fifield, and Rebecca Douglass!
Click here to view everyone in the Blog Hop.
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Thank you for dropping in for this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group post from a member of the Pee Dee Writers! Today, we will hear from Pee Dee Writer, Amanda Groves.
The optional question for November 1: Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?
Keep reading to see what Amanda has to say!
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Crawling to "The End"
NaNoWriMo can be one of the most challenging, stressful, and at times sob-worthy months of the year for aspiring writers. But the annual challenge also gives way to feelings of accomplishment and pride at doing something many never thought could be possible. For new NaNoers, that 50,000 word goal may sound daunting and impregnable. For many, they never make it that far. For those that do, there is an entirely new project laying in store for them, one that the emails and the site encouragement don’t really tell them about.
Actually finishing what you started.
This is my tenth year doing NaNoWriMo. Of those nine that I have finished, I lost two, and won the other seven. Only one of those projects became a complete novel, and I have yet to publish a novel of my own. That does not mean I lacked the motivation to finish my projects after they hit the 50k; it just means that I realized, in the process of writing, that I had no idea how I wanted to end most of them.
I am a pantser; in other words, I don’t usually like to plot and outline my novels before I begin them. When I first started writing, many of my novels would have a strong beginning, flounder around for a good 25,000 words, and suddenly I’d pop in a climactic battle and a conclusion. As a young writer, I thought how I wrote my books was perfectly acceptable. I could do what I wanted with my characters and then wrap everything up neatly.
This technique doesn’t get published books, however, and the more I started wanting to become an author, the more I started to really think about how I wanted my books to flow. The last two years of NaNo, I gave up on my drafts at some point in the middle of the month. I hadn’t tossed the ideas or the characters; I simply realized, in the process of writing it, that there was a better way for me to tell the stories to my audience. I went on to finish NaNo both years by hopping stories to write something else. This upcoming year, I am writing a new plot for one of those abandoned projects. The storyline may or may not pan out, but I plan on trying it anyway.
I may not have any novels ready to publish, but I feel better about taking a step back and really thinking about how my novel feels to me. Do I feel like I’m floundering, like this character’s death isn’t really important to the story? Or do I simply need to reevaluate the reasons leading up to that moment? Writing is a never-ending process. NaNoWriMo is simply the starting block for me to get off the ground and make a leap of faith forward. Sometimes I’m going to fall, and that’s okay. Most great novels were not written in thirty days!
Writing a novel in a month is a challenge all by itself, but I believe the real challenge is finding the motivation to take that starting block and finish it out after the excitement and group meets are over. Rarely is your project finished once you’ve hit that sparkling 50k. And, like me, that goal of a finished novel may not be met, not even in ten years. Your friend down the road may have published their very first NaNo project, but every writer is different. Write at your own pace, grow where you need to grow, and if you think you have a gem sparkling under your fingertips, buff it up!
Amanda currently lives in Iva, SC, with her cat, Ghost. A lover of all things artsy, she does design freelancing and performs music in her free time. As of 2017, she is going into her tenth year of NaNoWriMo, and is currently working on her long-term project Other Beings. She enjoys writing fantasy, drama, and adventure, with a dash of all things fan fiction on the side!