nanowrimo v. writing a novel

So this is my NaNoWriMo Does (Not) Teach You To Write Novels post.

I have conflicted feelings about NaNo. While I'm glad I've done it, and it definitely taught me some things that helped me to write this novel, there are some things that I needed to train my brain out of to make it work.

To tell the story properly, I think I need to ( start at the beginning. )

Overall, it can be useful to do NaNoWriMo. It teaches you that you can in fact write something that long, with that many pages. It teaches you how to pace events in a work that long--if you crunch all the main events down into five or ten thousand words, you'll have to go on a lot of tangents to get to 50k.

But there are three things that are pretty essential to relearning to write novels after NaNoWriMo: first of all, set your own goals. Second, have or find a community that'll hold you accountable to these goals you've set for yourself. And third, follow the story, not the wordcount.

Rewriting is, again, a whole different story.