Post NaNoWriMo
Asking Students to Reflect on the Experience
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
I’ve led students in the National Novel Writing Month challenge for the last dozen years. In addition to working with students through the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, I also write with a group in my hometown. We met in public, communal venues 16 days of last month in an effort to meet our goals. We celebrated on Wednesday night at a local bar for all our hard work. We are already planning our next writing intensive for January.
Unless you’re an elite athlete, most runners don’t run the Boston Marathon thinking they will win it. They run it to prove something to themselves. Every year 1% of runners who enter the race don’t even finish.
NaNoWriMo is a similar juggernaut. It requires time, commitment, a plan, and willpower. But it is less about writing the great American novel, and more about proving something to yourself. We created something that did not exist before in what one of my students called “the uncontrolled, chaotic bliss of the panic-induced writing of November.”
Along the way, I reinforce the idea that every writer must find a process that works for them, and NaNoWriMo is not a process; it’s just a fun challenge. Not meeting your word count doesn’t mean you aren’t a writer; it just means you didn’t meet your word count. Word counts do not a story or writer make. Writing is more nuanced, more crafted, more complex than just the amassing of words on a page.
While the event is still fresh in their minds in December, I ask students to write a reflection about their NaNoWriMo experience that answers the following questions:
What three words would you use to describe your 2022 NaNoWriMo experience?
What observations/takeaways can you make about your writing process from this experience?
How did your idea, characters, plot, pace, POV, tone, or style change from the original vision to the final product?
What is the single best thing you’ve learned about yourself or about writing from this experience?
Here are two excerpts of two very different student reflections:
Student #1:
I tried to make sure I wrote something on my NaNoWriMo every single day. Even if, like two separate days in November, it was only 7 words. This actually was such a good thing for me, because not only was I enjoying my NaNoWriMo, I was beginning to look forward to little moments of peace wherever I could find them to write as much as I possibly could as I fell in love with my story. When I put writing into my schedule, I found myself seeing it as less of a chore that I hardly had time to do correctly, and more of a chance to decompress at the end of the day on some days, or in the middle of the day. This awareness changed me by teaching me that I needed to make time for myself. Time to read, time to write, time to do different things I enjoyed, and schedule them in such a way that they would not feel like a chore, but a reprieve.
Student #2:
Writing is an art form that can often feel like work. Especially considering how I am an overthinker, staying invigorated with a frustrating project can be challenging. After NaNoWriMo, I’ve been paralyzed due to criticism and negative self-talk at multiple points throughout the process. With so much negativity stewing in my head, sometimes, sitting down at my desk and forcing myself to write is fruitless. It feels inorganic, stilted, inflexible.