National Novel Writing Month is an event / contest / challenge wherein participants strive to write 50,000 words of a single novel in the month of November. It’s been an annual event for years. I’m going to give it a shot this year.
November is the worst possible month for this, and since National Novel Writing Month is really a promotional event to raise money for their non-profit Young Writers Program, they would conceivably do better to choose a month where folks weren’t wrapped up in end-of-year holiday obligations and end-of-year rush-to-donate competition from other charities. But whatever.
I’m still gonna do it, mainly because I saw that some friends tweeted about doing it. The way things being what they are, I made the commitment and the friends who inspired it apparently (as far as I know and at the time of this writing) have not. Oops.
So be it. I’m going for it anyway. What do I hope to achieve?
Well, first off, I don’t care if I win (hit 50,000 words before the end of November.) My goal is to write a huge chunk of the first book in my Shaper’s World milieu – if that’s 50,000 words, great. If it’s less, that’s still going to amount to more than I have right now. I’ll call that a win.
What’s going to detour time and energy away from NaNoWriMo? Day job. Preparing my anthology “The Sovereign Era: Year One” for release before the end of Fall. Writing two installments of “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights,” which is about 4000 words or eight hours right there. Another project that’s mostly done that I can’t talk about yet, but it’s supposed to come out at the end of November. Life.
So what.
If you want to follow my progress, here is my NaNoWriMo profile page. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, friend me up over there, too. Let’s pile up some words and jump on them at the end of November like a heap of Autumn leaves.
Possibly related posts:
Back to the Shaper’s World. Sweet! I’ll be sending a bunch of positive thoughts your way during this NaNoWriMo season.
You always seem busy, Matt. I don’t know how you manage it, but it is inspiring. I am busy with other stuff this year, but I plan to do NaNoWriMo again this year. For now though, I have a bunch of writing that I need to do for a bunch of other projects. I doubt I’ll make much headway on this, but it is fun reading all of these old manuscripts.
How do I manage it? Hah! I’m not sure I do. I have a lot of works in progress… every now and then one of them actually reaches completion. This fall, it’s the CD edition of “Anyman,” “The Sovereign Era: Year One” anthology, at least four more installments of “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights,” and just maybe hitting fifty thousand words in the month of November on “Light of the Outsider” as part of National Novel Writing Month.
My problem(?) is that I have a lot of ideas — the muse has a whole herd of genii in the pen — and I move from one to the next as the passion strikes. I sometimes wish I was just a musician, or just a writer, or just a web guy. It would make the focus thing easier!
Mad props, friend! And remember, Nathan Lowell is out there!
Eeek! Nathan!!!
The way I look at it, the only person one competes with during NaNoWriMo is one’s self.
(Is that the proper use of “one?” Ah well….)