National Novel Writing Month
/November is National Novel Writing Month, better known as NANO.
The challenge? 50,000 words in 30 days.
I've signed up.
You all are supposed to be my friends. Why do you let me do these things?
I've looked at participating in NANO before and have never quite found the courage to do it. It translates to roughly 1700-words per day. That equates to 51,000 words but the thought is that if you fall behind, you'll never catch up. At least this way I'll have a few words banked if something (like a nap) should come up.
The idea behind NANO is to just write. No editing. Write, write, write. Get the words down. Is anyone going to write a good novel in 30 days? Doubtful. But again, not the point.
For me, I'm proving to myself (yet again) that I don't have to be in the mood to write. My only job is to show up, sit down, and start working. The sooner I get 1700 words on the page, the sooner I can get up and go do something more fun, like trying to bathe the cats. But if I can write 1700 bad words for 30 days, it inspires me to attempt something more reasonable, like 500 good words a day, on a book I might really care about.
As it stands, I only have the vaguest of ideas about what I may start writing on November 1st. That's okay. This isn't anything I plan on publishing or even editing. It's just writing for the sake of writing.
Why share this will all of you? Accountability. I can guarantee the shine of attempting something new will wear off by day 3 and I'll be making up excuses faster than a teenager caught joy-riding about why I can't work on my novel.
The blog may suffer. Or it will suddenly be filled with snippets of scene descriptions and dialogue that appear to have been written by a drug-addled monkey. Yea! That means I'm writing.
For those of you who follow me on Facebook and Twitter and are sick of seeing me post about my workouts and running times, good news! Now I'll be posting exciting daily word counts as well.
Cheers,
Dena
