We are well into the second week – uh, more like nearing the end of it, dear – of NanoWriMo. Scratch that. Yeah, It’s pretty much over. For those of you who don’t know what NanoWriMo is, which is an acronym for National Novel Writing Month where us writers emerge to challenge ourselves to write 50,000 words in just 30 days. Uh, you can’t be serious. Totally serious. That’s right, a novel in a month! Yikes!
As you write, you earn virtual badges. Badges for coffee. Oo. Badges for procrastination. Ooo! Badges for keeping track of your writing on a daily basis. Ooowee! Badges for writing streaks. Badges for well, whatever. You “Win” the challenge at the end of the month by accomplishing the challenge of getting a 50k manuscript… first draft of course. You don’t actually “Win” anything; although, I’d beg to differ as accomplishing the daunting task of writing a book is hugely satisfying… and if it can be accomplished within a month? Well, heck, sign me up!
This will be my first year as a participant and as far as my progress is going,
you could say that I’m a bit behind. A bit? Okay, you got me. Actually, as I write this post, I am about 7k words behind. Ugh. It makes the task seem a bit more daunting but it is what it is. As long as I sit down and write something – ANYTHING – I seem to make at least an inchworm’s amount of progress and I guess that’s okay. No, it’s kind of pathetic. Hush, I know. It’s bad. Really bad. But I still plan on cruising along to the finish line. My last novel was a written in four months. I’ve always wanted to cut that time in half but my OCD puts me in the position to keep my words spelled as correctly as possible and pantsing a novel has sort of been my go-to.
Pantsing?
Oh, pantsing is writing your book without a planned or mapped outline of your story. For other novels I have in my idea pipeline, I actually do have SOME of them strategically organized; but, for this particular novel I’m writing? NOPE. Not even a little bit? NOPE. Hmm… YUP.
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You don’t realize how many distractions there are until you have to swat them away! I’m generally pretty good at carving out time each day to get a butt-load of things done; but when you factor in the fact that you have notes planned for your story – I thought you didn’t plan your novel on this one – and you end up writing by the seat of your pants. Right. Well, I attempted to do #preptober and outline my story.. and try hard I did! But?? it was pretty much useless and I’ll have to re-orchestrate the narrative. Yikes. Exactly, it sort of gets you a bit scrambled. My book has a lot of layers. If you read Harbor Excursions, you totally get it. It’s got the multi-facets of characters and world-building of a YA Fantasy fiction but in an adult contemporary, chick lit, thrilling romance kind of way.
I don’t think that’s a category…
Quiet.
Soooo anyway, I came across NaNoWriMo a couple years ago and decided to be a sideline voyeur until this year when I watched a NaNoWriMo Tag video. What the heck does that mean? Remember when you were a little kid and you played a game of tag in the school yard? Yeah, it’s like that. Once I watched a couple tag videos I felt compelled to give it a whirl. Speaking of whirlwinds: 2018 happened. So, what better way to get my next book going than with NaNoWriMo Challenge! Game on. I’m fairly competitive so it behooved me to give it a try.
The reality is, I felt quite compelled to jump in and do this because even if I don’t finish all 50k words in 30 days… At least I tried.
At least you got off your butt and starting writing books again.
Yeah, that too.
