I have to be honest, November is one of my favorite months. First off, I love the colder weather, and here in MD it really doesn’t start to cool off until mid-October most years. Secondly, I love pumpkin pie. And thirdly, I love NanoWriMo! (That’s National Novel Writing Month, if you hadn’t heard of it). The goal of NanoWriMo is to write 1,667 words per day, for a total of 50k words at the end of the month, which comes out to roughly a short novel. So far this year, I’m ahead of the game. This is my 11th year and hopefully my 10th win, and it gets easier every year. (Also, if you want to help out, consider donating to the non-profit’s Young Writers Program!)
So this year, I have three goals:
· Main goal: 50k words in a month (which is about 1667 words per day)
· Stretch goal: 60k words in a month (which is 2k words per day)
· Stretch-stretch goal: 75k words in a month (which is 2.5k words per day)
That said, I’m currently hovering at about 2600 words per day, so if I can maintain that pace, it’s possible I could even beat my stretch-stretch goal (which would be awesomesauce). If this happened, though, I’d have to start on a new book, because I’m pretty sure I’d run out of material for my current WIP (which is Book 5 of Land of Szornyek).
I’m only about halfway through the month so far, so we will see where we end up! You can check out my progress here.
I’ve had a few questions since the beginning of the month about how I can possibly write this much, this fast, etc. etc., and I have two very quick answers:
It’s my full-time job, so I have all day to hit my word count goals if I need it.
Practice. Ask a guitar player how they can play so fast or such complex pieces and they’ll say “Practice.” It’s the same with writing. The more you practice, the faster you get, the better your rough drafts get. It’s really quite simple.
Also this month, I’m doing a series of monster drawings which I am posting daily on Instagram. I’ve done this for the last three years and it is a great amount of fun (though I don’t know what I’m going to do once I’ve finished the monster series!), though this year I have made a slight change, which is that I am no longer naming every monster unless I plan to use it in the series. Turns out, I can do the drawings pretty quickly, but all the world-building details take me a lot longer.
It seems that November is a popular month for “doing things”: for example, there is “No-Shave November,” in which people refuse to shave for the entire month; “No Spend November,” in which budget-minded people attempt not spend any month on anything outside of their regular necessities like food; and “November Photo Challenge,” in which you post a photo a day based on a specific pre-determined theme—and of course, there’s NanoWriMo.
Are you doing anything interesting this month?
