I won NaNoWriMo 2013!

This year I did it again. At 2 a.m. on 28 November, 2013 I put an end to the novel “Affinità d’intenti” (Kindred Purposes), which I was writing in the scope of NaNoWriMo 2013. The total word count reached is 50,038 words, a little more than the minimum to win, but I got to the finish line almost three days in advance and, in addition, I finished the first draft of my eighth book (five already published and three to be published).

Finish to write a novel is a fantastic feeling, to make it even better is the awareness that I have done in a little more than 27 days, keeping the promise made to myself to win this year’s NaNoWriMo, too. For a short book like this it is undoubtedly the right pace (a little less than 2,000 words a day), which confirms to me that I have reached a considerable degree of discipline in carrying out my work as a writer.

But what makes me even happier is to have completed a new experiment, thanks to which I have tried to overcome some of my limits.

Until a month ago, in fact, the only things I had imagined about this novel were the title, the name of the protagonist, the opening scene and the climax. I was not sure to succeed in getting a story long enough to put together over 50 thousand words.

Addressing this challenge has taught me not to be in a hurry to conclude a scene, but instead try to focus on some details just to attain the word target I set for myself. It pushed me to try to write almost always scenes of about 2000 words or at least the logical parts of a scene with this length, which is exactly the average ideal length of a scene. The need to reach a given total target has had the merit of force me to expand a story that otherwise would have been much faster in my mind, despite the short available time has not allowed me to actually explore all possibilities. In this regard, to avoid writing a too poor story I decided to focus on a single point of view and remain anchored to it throughout the novel. So I found myself to deepen the main characters only (which are two), leaving behind all that the protagonist could not know. I have been facilitated by the choice of writing a novel with plenty of action, which takes place in a period of twenty-four hours only.

I clearly suspend any judgment on the result until I’ll put my hands on it again in who knows how many months, but in the course of writing, apart from uninspired one or two sessions, I felt really tuned with the characters and I liked a lot the parts that I re-read. In short, I can be satisfied with this experiment. I know I’ve learned something new and at the same time I’ve put aside another novel, assuring certain constancy in the publication of my books, along with the other two that are in the process of editing, for the next year and a half.

I believe that in the coming weeks I will miss writing. In 2014 I have to publish two books, on which I have to do a lot more work. I have to dedicate myself to the English translation and the promotion in the English-speaking market of “Red Desert”. I want to retry the NaNo, no doubt. Apart from that I don’t know how much time I will have to devote to writing another novel. I hope to carve out the time to start another big project, one of those that involve a number of words of more than 100 thousands. I hope so because it is difficult for me to spend so long time without writing.

In the latest 12 months I’ve written 264,000 words and I know that I’ll suffer to keep a lower pace. On the other hand, after almost two years I won’t have tight deadlines and I’ll see how to manage the time at my disposal.

However, by winning the NaNoWriMo again, I’ve attained another one of my resolutions for 2013, which I set for myself on last December, and it was one of the most challenging, so I’m really happy about that.