NaNoWriMo.
For those unaware, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month
November is the time of year when writers from all over the globe challenge themselves to achieve their personal goals of writing their own novel. Short novels average at 50,000 words long, thus why the goal at the end of the month is to have that many words typed up just in time for holiday season.
If you want to learn more about NaNoWriMo and how you can participate, feel free to check out the official website. The website is full of information about National Novel Writing Month. If you sign up, it will also track your progress and it even has a badge system to help motivate you to get to your goal! Lastly, it has a handy F.A.Q section that will answer all the questions you have about the event and more.
I bet you are wondering, have I ever completed NaNoWriMo?
The answer is not yet.
I have attempted NaNoWriMo for three consecutive years. Each year I have gotten closer and closer to getting to the goal of 50,000 words. However, the closest I have achieved was 20,000 words by November 30th.
So what makes this year any different?
How am I going to achieve 50k words in one month? Especially if I have failed constantly?
After doing a bit of reflection, I realized why I failed. It was because I was always ill-prepared for NaNoWriMo. I would remember it far too late. Half the time, I did not even know what I was going to write about until November 1st! Imagine how chaotic that was!
For the following four weeks, we are going to experience this pre-production journey together. We'll discuss strategies on how to narrow down your list of potential stories so that you'll have a much easier time figuring out what to write about. We'll break down your chosen novel topic into chapters and scenes that you can plan out on your calendar. We'll also create backup ideas and plans for those days that Writer's Block rears its ugly head.
The key to winning NaNoWriMo is pre-production.
Plan out what you want to do and it'll save your time and sanity in the long run.
Our goal is that by the time November rolls around the block, we will be ready to write a minimum of 1667 words per day.
In the meantime, check out the official website, sign up and start brainstorming for novel topics. Next week I'll have some great tricks and tips to narrow down all your brilliant ideas and perhaps even some goodies to help you out as well!