Learning from Nano - and Revelation

Well, I am not as far ahead as I had wished to be on NaNo. I am still going to try to catch up and do the whole finish thing on time.

Okay so being able to buy the Scrivener package for half price does have a lot of influence on me really wanting to get to the finish line.

Hey, I like the trial version. Seems like it fits my writing style a lot better than Word does.

Which brings up some of my NaNo learnings.

I had always thought of myself as rather a NaNo writer pretty much all the time, but whether I really was or just sort of thought of myself as such, I'm not quite sure. But one thing I have realized is how freeing this experiment with NaNo is. And how very hard it is to turn off the editor that lives in us, that we battle with all the time. To just write the words as they come, put down the images that fly across the mind, is harder than you might think, while just putting them all there on the page without taking the time to worry over each word, each scene, each paragraph, and try to hone it and pare it down while putting it out there.

Which comes to the Revelation.

Somewhere along the way I think I have fallen into the trap of trying to write like what I read. I'm not talking about style or words or anything like that. I'm talking about the finished product. The finish, polish, and flow.

Like all great writers say to be, I am an avid reader. I'm also an eclectic one and will read pretty much anything that comes into my hand. Just so you know.

But as writers to make ourselves better we are supposed to read great books and learn from them. And that's great advice. But I think I've sort of fallen into trying to write like the books as I am writing. Which means the finished book I see. Not the many messy rough drafts that took them to get there. There's not much we hear or see of that. And if we do hear it, and most writers are very candid about how much work and how many drafts it took them to get to the finished product. But without seeing it for ourselves it's hard to really take that in as pertaining to how we are writing.

Or at least it is for me I guess. Since I think that's what I was trying to do, subconsciously of course, since who in their right mind would put themselves through that? Not that writers are in their right mind most of the time anyway. Especially during NaNo time. When they are behind.

But that's been just a learning, a Revelation if you will, from doing NaNo.

What about you? What are you learning?

I think I'm learning to be free. Perhaps in more than just writing. Maybe.