Two years ago I wrote a post about Creating a Creative Process. Since then, I have completed three novels and am in production on a fourth, with many more in the pipeline. I have learned a lot of lessons through trial and error. I still have a lot more to learn. But after two years, I figured it was time for an update.

Note that this post is not titled "How To Write a Novel". This is a snapshot of my own process at a specific time in my writing journey. Maybe it will be helpful to other writers, but it's not a prescription nor a recommendation. I'm just sharing my experience.

So much can change in a year!

This has been a year of massive change for me, and we'll discuss that below. But first, I participated in National Novel Writing Month again this year, and as last year, this is my report on how I performed. Short story: I didn't "win" by writing fifty thousand words, but I did make a very good showing. Here's my word count graph for 2018.

As you can see, my NaNoWriMo project capped out at 31,168 words. Not bad. I drafted twenty-one days in November, so my average was below the required "winning" pace. Still, I averaged a thousand words per calendar day, and I feel pretty good about that.

TL;DR: There is some genius in this theory, and possibly some madness. Every writer should at least understand Dramatica's four through-lines, its definition of character archetypes, and the two helpful concepts of character resolve and story limit. If you go deeper, prepare to be confused.

I wanted to record for posterity my first experience of "winning" National Novel Writing Month. As you may know, NaNoWriMo is a self-challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

Throughout 2017, I have been tracking my writing statistics (screenshot provided). As you may see from the screenshot, before November, I never got anywhere near 50k words in a single month. So I took NaNoWriMo 2017 as a true challenge to get my word counts up and make some real progress, to prove to myself that I could truly improve both speed and quality.

I always aspired to being an author. In my teens and early twenties, I probably started a half-dozen "first novels" that never got finished (and that was probably for the best). When I started writing software, though, that became my creative outlet, and I stopped writing fiction. I even stopped reading fiction for many years.

In 2015, I decided to pick up that dream once again, and I determined to set myself to finishing a first novel. I dusted off some old ideas, tossed in some new twists, and began putting words down.

And I quickly realized that it wasn’t going to work.

Something I have been struggling with during the work on my (current) first novel is this: I am very likely producing the worst book I will ever write.

Assuming I finish it — which given past history is not a foregone conclusion — suppose I find the whole thing too exhausting to do again? Having written only one, it would, by default, be the worst one (and the best I suppose). If I go on to write the second, I should have learned much from writing the first, and the writing should improve. Skills are supposed to improve with practice, are they not? So I am destined to look back on this book and recognize how bad it is.

But there’s no getting around that. It was the same thing when I was learning to write computer software. Every six months, I would look back on my code from six months prior, and be disgusted by how bad it was. Most programmers recognize this feeling. It’s how we know we’re getting better. If ever we look back on old code and feel satisfied with it, it’s a sign that we’ve stagnated, and maybe it’s time to look for a different …