NaNoWriMo 2024: writing and drawing challenge

Just like how October brings the challenge to draw everyday, November brings along the challenge to write everyday. Last year I managed to draw almost every day for Drawtober - this year I didn’t, as I was preparing myself to take part in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, to try to finish the first draft of the first book of my high fantasy story.

I have kept my art and my writing quite separate until recently, keeping writing as a hobby while I made art into a career (or at least I am trying to!). But I have always had the dream of publishing my stories. It took me until only a few months ago to actually put ‘Writer’ in my social media bios to finally embrace the fact that this is a big part of my life. I have been making up stories since I was little, playing them out in my head or, when I learned how to write properly (I learned English late), scribbling them down in notebooks. The premiss for the story I am currently writing has actually been around for more than 10 years! During those 10 years the story has developed and evolved as I’ve grown up, got more life experience, and taught myself how to actually write a book well. It has gone through many ‘drafts’, if you could even call the first few iterations that, but the past few years I have been taking things more seriously and worked on a draft that I want to make into a final thing. My characters have practically grown up with me and I have been able to take this time to figure out who they are and what I want them to represent.

I am perhaps a fifth of the way through my first book (not counting all the random scenes I have on separate documents). The current word count is frightening but that will be a problem for future me to fix. For now, I just need to tell the story to myself, figure out what sticks and what doesn’t, and actually finish a draft for the first time in my life.

The challenge of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of a draft for a novel, which means setting a goal of writing around 1,666 words a day. I want to do this and more during November.

(Just as a note: I am not associating myself with the company or website also named NaNoWriMo, only the stand-alone challenge.)

Things I want to do during the challenge are:

- Write the book (the main chunk of work)

- Give myself days to research if I need to (my story involves a lot of myths and legends from different parts of the world to find inpiration, so I am always on the lookout.)

- Draw things from my story, whether it’s the characters, environments, scenes, objects, fantasy creatures… I also like the idea of using the new game Tiny Glade to help me build cities and other places in my story to help me visualise things better (and have some fun). I have a specific sketchbook for my novel, which I have barely touched, so I want to change that.

- Make sure I include stretching and exercise into my routine so that I am not simply hunched over my desk writing for an entire month.

I know this is a lot to add to an already-daunting challenge, but I want to fully immerse myself in my story’s world and get myself making art I truly love as I’ve been struggling with drawing in general, as I’ve mentioned in my monthly blogs. But of course, writing taking priority.

This is by no means a tutorial, but if you are also considering doing NaNoWriMo, here are some things I am keeping in mind:

Outline

I have my main outline for the story in its own document, though it is missing a few connecting scenes here and there. I like to let myself see where the story wants to go so I’m not too worried about this yet. I know how I want the book to wrap up so as long as I have this goal in mind I can figure out what has to happen in the middle for the characters to get to that outcome.

Characters

I have documents full of character profiles, character histories, character motivations, how characters’ stories tie into other characters’, even info on their parents or important people in their life. I should probably mention that this story has 5 character POVs - so for this to work I have to have all these things sorted out in my head and on paper so that it doesn’t just turn into one big mess. And, knowing how each character thinks and reacts to things, I have less trouble knowing how to progress a scene as I just need to figure out what the character would do in the given situation.

Schedule

I’ve drawn out a very rough schedule for myself. I know I won’t be able to follow it, for a fact; things will pop up. I know I’ll need to prepare for at least one art market this month, so that will take some time away from writing. Other things will pop up too, like events or day trips. This is completely fine and not something to worry about if it puts you a little behind. This challenge is a lot, so beating yourself up over not being at a certain goal by a certain time is not conducive to staying healthy or productive. I wrote ‘Write ~600 words’ in the morning and ‘Write ~1000 words’ in the afternoon fully knowing this might not happen each day. And that’s okay! I think I will track my progress less on if I’ve written 1,666 words each day and more on if I’ve written 11,662 words each week. I honestly see myself writing more than 2,000 words on one day and maybe only 500 words another day.

Inspiration

I’ve got multiple things to turn to if I lag or don’t know what to do next:

- Pinterest. I have a couple of Pinterest boards that I’ve been adding to for years. One is for the type of clothes each character might wear, one is for writing prompts, one is for scene locations, and so on.

- Youtube. Like Pinterest, I have a playlist of videos I’ve saved over the years that help me research a certain topic in my book or help me to be more historically accurate or gives writing advice.

- Sketchbooks. I’ve made a few pieces of art here and there over the years for my stories. As well as that, I have two books from two final major projects from my university courses: concept art books for the story I am currently writing and for another story I want to make into a comic, set hundreds of years before the events of this first book. I focused more on environment and object design in these projects, but they help me to visualise my story and sometimes even get me excited to draw more. As mentioned above, I have a designated sketchbook for my novel that I haven’t used half as much as I planned to. This month I want to use this as a place to scribble down ideas visually, and hopefully, maybe, develop things like character designs, creature designs, enviroments, scenes…etc.

- Notes. I sometimes may draw inspo from myself! I often like to re-read ideas I’ve written down on my notes app or random scenes I’ve written on separate documents. It may remind me that I want to add a specific scene somewhere, or I’ll read a little tidbit about a character that I completely forgot about and will be able to keep in mind when writing from their point of view.

- Notes app. A little more about the notes app I use - it’s so useful. It lets me colour-code notes as well as add tags to them if I want to. I have a specific blue colour I use to indicate this is a story-related note, and I have tags for all my characters as well as things like ‘Locations’, ‘Plot points’, ‘Worldbuilding’ and even something as simple as ‘Names’ (a tag I use to just write down any cool names I come across that I can pull from when I need to name a side character). I have years worth of notes on this thing, and I love going through it to read the random things I thought up for a character or plot point. The app is Google Keep, by the way! I’m not sure if there are other notes apps that have these features (I’m sure there are, though), but I would recommend having one.

- Games. As I mentioned, I would really like to use games that allow you to build little scenes, like Tiny Glade or Townscaper, to have fun building up the villages and cities in my fantasy world. I can then use them as reference when it comes to writing scenes set in these places, and I may even use them as reference for drawings. I have done this already with Townscaper, and am excited to try out the full version of Tiny Glade after trying out the demo. This will be a good way to change things up if I ever need a break from writing but still want to work on building up the story in some way.

Trackers

I’m not using websites or apps to track my progress - just good ol’ fashioned pen and paper.

I have set up some pages in my bullet journal to help me visually see my progress throughout NaNoWriMo. Each day I’m going to try to track:

- The words I write

- Tick whether I did writing, art or research (or all three!)

- Give myself a one-sentence progress update (such as where I left off, what I need to do next, how I’m feeling…)

- The hours I write

- My mood

- Any exercise I do

Now…I’m actually really bad at keeping up with trackers. So this might be a complete waste of time for me. I want to at least keep up with the word count, though. We’ll see how I do.

I’ve got lots planned for this month, and am excited to get started! Depending on how much I have to say by the end of the month, I may make another blog post or video about my experience doing this challenge for the first time. To anybody else setting themselves the NaNoWriMo challenge, good luck, and have fun!

~Emily