NaNo crazies

[Golden]

Hi, I'm delurking.
I unofficially started NaNo (I started late on November 3rd, but have caught up minus 400 words as of today; following the rules but never actually signed up). I went into it with a spur of the moment idea, no outline, no direction.
20, 000 words in now (nearly) and after the first 10,000 words I changed ...a lot. I went from 1st POV to 3rd. I have renamed characters completely. I have changed the tone. I've put in a bunch of stuff that makes no sense if you read the 1st bit without the lead-in to it.
I have not went back to edit because I thought the point would be to chug forward only.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to look at this disaster in december and say "oh that was not smart, you have one fine little mess to deal with now"....it will seriously need to be re-written word for word, etc. Should I just stop the craziness now, outline something decent vs. just chugging through each day? Or do it and get it done, feel out the whole thing till the very end and see what other new things I will work with.
The trouble is that by the end of November, I complete it, done. I feel I can't really say I wrote a novel because the first bit and the middle are already so drastically different, their not even the same book (same general concept, just the POV and some names , etc etc all changing).
Anybody of any thoughts on this?

This is a roller-coaster. One minute I love it. The next I'm bored. The next I am crying over how awful it is. The next I'm a genuis. The next I want to throw it out the window.

[AMSchilling]

It's tempting to scrap things when I get a mess, or go back and rewrite, but I find myself losing the inspiration and fire when I do. Plus half the changes I go back and make end up having to be thrown out later anyway, when the plot takes yet another unexpected turn. Kim Harrison, author of awesome "The Hollows" series, maybe explained the "why not to" best in a blog post about her own Nano experience this year:

"When I write rough draft, I make it a practice to never go back into a chapter I’ve finished, even if I want to make major changes. What I will do is briefly open the file back up and jot down the changes I want to make in that big white space I always leave at the beginning of the chapter, and then proceed onto the next chapter as if I had made those changes. Hey, I make things up for a living. It’s easy to pretend.

This novel is no exception, and as I began my dialog for chapter three late yesterday, I found the few notes I penciled in the day before (for changes I wanted to make in chapter one) were now useless. After moving forward another step, I found I needed bigger things, such as an additional character, I had to change how someone dies, and I found the way to begin the betrayal I’d already planned on, but in a much stronger, faster way. Had I taken yesterday and worked my original, now useless, changes in, my word count for the day would have been very near zero, and all for nothing as I have since thrown them out for something better."

Remember that a first draft is exactly that - a first draft (which in my mind is more like the skeleton of some odd creature rather than a complete creature). You're going to go back through the whole thing at least a couple of times, and can fix things then. Whether it's a mess or not, needs major fixing to tie it all together or not, it's still a novel.

[Sanderling]

This is a roller-coaster. One minute I love it. The next I'm bored. The next I am crying over how awful it is. The next I'm a genuis. The next I want to throw it out the window.

Welcome, Golden!
Sounds like you've about nailed writing, right there.

I think that what you should do depends on what you want to get out of NaNo. If your reason for doing NaNo is to have an external force pushing you to write every day to achieve a goal because you have some trouble being disciplined with your writing effort otherwise, then you should definitely stick with it and see it through to the end of November. The front of your novel isn't going anywhere, you can always go back and fix it up later.

But if your reason for doing NaNo was to develop an idea and have some fun, and the challenge was just a bonus, you might find it easier to go back and address that first bit now. Especially if it's going to sit and weigh at the back of your mind and distract you from continuing forward.

Either way, you need to remember - this is just your crappy first draft (which is really a redundant phrase, as all first drafts by everyone are crappy). Even if you go back and fix the first bit, you're still going to reach the end of the manuscript and have a lot of work to do revising it; it's just the nature of the beast. It just might be a little more work if you don't change that first bit than if you did, that's all.

The good thing is you changed everything after only 10,000 words. In novel length, that's not that much. Most of your novel will be in the form you want it. An author whose blog I follow recently changed her work in progress from 3rd person to 1st and added in a character - and this was after she'd already revised it a couple of times. At least you'd only be fixing up 10,000 words, not 80,000 words. I think this probably happens to authors, even successful published authors, more often than we realize.

If I were in your shoes, I'd just keep moving forward, knowing I'll be doing revisions later anyway. The most important thing is to finish the first draft - fixing up that first bit won't matter if the draft doesn't get finished.

[polymath]

One underlying purpose of NaNoWriMo is to just write, 50,000 or so words, and in the process discover craft, voice, and meaning that may then be practiced the rest of the year to strengthen writing and writer. Okay, there's a deadline, an outcome, and a publication prize for winners, writers who write 50,000 or more somewhat sensical words: five free mass market paperback memento copies. So just write to the goal, feel free to free write to discover the inner creator-writer. And relax. So what if it's weak, strong, or ultimately meaningless or meaningful. The journey is its own reward, considering last year 200,000 writers entered and 1 percent passed the 50,000-word goal line.

[Golden]

Wow, thank you very much for the responses. Each of them really made me think and consider this as a true learning opportunity. So I'm forging ahead and still keeping up with the word count (even though I'm officially not even signed it, I'm playing "pretend"). It is true that this does help me to discover different voices, characters I like or don't like, new ideas (entirely new ideas), point of view that I'm comfortable with, etc. Thanks for the great advice. Very helpful for a newbie like me.