Muscle memory is an interesting thing

I was a NaNoWriMo virgin until this month, though I have written two books. The first was a thousand words of drivel, done quickly, long ago. The second was done in fits and starts over the course of two years, with several real life speed bumps in the road. I have edited the second twice, and am now in the process of editing NaNo 2021. <br><br>NaNo 2021 is a sorry mess, to the point that I thought I wasted an entire month of my life (yes, I wrote the last week of October and first week of November, technically making it a 50,000 word mess in five weeks). There are the obvious typos, missing words, that sort of thing. But it's also an extreme example of a "zero" draft. The plot was loose at the beginning, and disintegrated entirely by the end. I was writing aimlessly, having no clue what was happening other than "Chase Bad Guys". The villain was an afterthought, and his motivation was an after-afterthought. There is literally a sentence in the draft: "I don't know why I'm here, but I'm here." Which goes on to become the plot for the rest of the book. It was a mess, and at some point in the future I will literally be starting over from scratch, keeping maybe a couple of dozen paragraphs at most. But by god, I hit 50,000 words, and won NaNo. <br><br>NaNo 2023 is different. I started writing on the 1st, and was still writing on the 30th. But I wrote an average of 2300 words per day. I wrote more in the last 10 days of NaNo than I did in the entirety of any other month. I wrote so much, and so well, that there is one point where I use the wrong characters name. Once. Out of 75,000 words. Most of the other times, I use nicknames, or call a character "her" or "my dad" or something. But at least once, I called a character the wrong name. The only real flub was 20 pages of written in first person instead of third, because I got so caught up in the flow of writing that I didn't notice. I was in the "zone" for so much more than I was when I wrote the crap that is NaNo 2021. <br><br>I was writing 7-8 hours a day at the end of the month, and getting 2,000+ words done. I know where I messed up, and where I need to go back and add in some background, and what I need to change. I have a coherent story, from the beginning to the end. I have an arc, and a point. I have character development, and interactions that are so fluid that I'm still getting comments from my beta readers. I have a plot, and characters, and it's a *book*. <br><br>I finished editing NaNo 2021 just before I started NaNo 2023, and the difference between the two is stunning. It's like night and day. And to think I was considering scrapping my writing career because NaNo 2021 was such a mess. I'm glad I didn't. <br><br>I know I still have a ton of work ahead of me. I'm going to be editing this new book at least two, possibly three times, to make it worthy of an indie release. I have to go back and read my edited NaNo 2021 again to see if I want to go that route with it (I'm leaning heavily towards yes). But the difference in quality, in writing and plotting and storytelling and even just typing, between the two is so widespread that writing 50,000 words of crap two years ago was worth it for the finished book I have now. <br><br>A huge thank you to the NaNo community. You are a blessing and an inspiration. I may have been here and watching for years, but it wasn't until I dove on in that I realized what you all have to offer. Hugs on hugs on hugs, internet friends. If you're in the 10% that hit 50,000 words, you should be proud. And if you didn't, don't give up. Every word you wrote is a word closer to your finished book. Keep writing.