It’s that time of year again. National Novel Writing Month. What is that, you ask? I give you this from their website:
National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.
Hundreds of NaNoWriMo novels have been traditionally published. They include Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, Hugh Howey’s Wool, Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Jason Hough’s The Darwin Elevator, and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder.
I’ve done this before with varying degrees of success. I only actually hit the 50,000 word goal once, but the years that I focused on it, I was able to focus on my writing for an entire month. I’m not planning to try for the 50,000 words this year, but I do want to focus on my writing every day this month. This post is a start.
Is anyone trying NaNo this year? What are you doing to focus on your writing for the month of November?
Eight Ladies Writing 
Hi Michille – yes, I did it last year and was astounded at how much having a tracker for my words helped me shift things along! I’ve started a new book and it was all a bit hesitant (you know – too much researching, not enough of the story) but I began today and already I feel a bit more purposeful.
I think it’s the old adage – what gets measured, gets done. Not appropriate for everything – quality is a key measure – but certainly NaNoWriMo can give your wordcount a decent kick up the rear!
Very true about what gets measured gets done. For my day job, I’m in the grants game and measuring results is key. Good luck this year. I hope you get your word count. When I’ve done it, I’ve used it as a license to just write, even if I know it’s crap. I put the editing part of my writing brain on hold.
Again, good luck!
Thank you! Not going badly, 8 days in, but so much of my writing time is dictated (pardon the pun) by my ‘proper’ job…. Good to see from comments below that others use it to give themselves a kick up the bum. And I’m looking forward to reading @Jeannie’s novella too!
I’m glad your “not going badly.” I, too, have the ‘proper job’ issue. But the bills have to get paid. Keep going. 8 days down, 22 to go.
In October I wrote around 25K in a new novella for my Demon series. Set during WW2 in a Jacksonville, FL shipyard that built Liberty Ships, the cargo ships the supplied the war effort, it traces the story of Esther Streight and Lonnie Purdue as they work to stop a certain she-demon from sabotaging the Allied war effort.
I would have hit 30K but I had scheduled a vacation the last week of October. In a cool twist, though, while I’m frittering away my time vacationing, I got an opportunity to tour one of the two remaining Liberty ships left in the world, which will make my climax scene so much easier to write.
This is the easiest and fastest story I’ve ever written, so I’m pretty sure 50K is beyond my abilities.
30k is darn good. I can’t wait to read it.
I’m doing NaNo this year to finish my book. I’m at the halfway point and expect it’ll be about 40-50K to finish. I need to get a draft done by EOM, too, because it’s supposed to go to my editor in January. It’ll be tight, but I hope the group motivation and daily word counts will help.
Good for you. And good luck. That’s a lot to do. I have faith.
Whoop, whoop!
Hey, thanks for the overview of NaNoWriMo, it’s surprising how many people don’t know what it is, even with so many writers participating. Good luck writers, on your challenge this year!