I fin­ished National Novel Writ­ing Month yesterday.

I am far from done with this book.

What I have is a bar­rel of con­text, back­story, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and Some Good Ideas. It is not, in any way, a cohe­sive novel. Oh no. That’s what comes next.  Editing.

I learned some impor­tant lessons this year:

•  Have a plan: I approach writ­ing as I do soft­ware development…design first, develop sec­ond, then refac­tor until you’re not ashamed of it any­more. This is a crit­i­cal step;  before this month I had no process to speak of at all.
• Out­lines are vital: Every­thing for which I had an out­line reads bet­ter and is more enter­tain­ing than the places where I was improvising.
• Impro­vi­sa­tion is vital:  Mak­ing it up as I go gives me new insights into plot, char­ac­ters, set­tings and such when the out­line grows too staid.
• Write or Die:  True on two fronts. First, if I can put a lit­tle down sev­eral times a day, word­counts become triv­ial. If I stop, I will not start again. Sec­ond, the Write or Die tool is an amaz­ing moti­va­tor for get­ting words down quickly. I highly rec­om­mend it.
• Stop Over­think­ing: Just write. Move quickly. Make notes when you want to come back to some­thing. Don’t judge the words before they are on the page, and even then, don’t re-read until it is time for you to edit.
• I Don’t Need NaNoW­riMo To Find Time To Write: I did not clear any­thing spe­cial from my sched­ule to par­tic­i­pate this year.  All I did was use my free time wisely. I can do this the rest of the year as well, ren­der­ing the need for a month ded­i­cated to writ­ing obsolete.

Christo­pher T. Miller

Christo­pher T. Miller is a soft­ware devel­oper by trade and a writer by neces­sity. He is one of the co-founders of Podiobooks.com and is the Over­lord of The Secret Lair. He has not yet been eaten by a grue.