So what the heck is NaNoWriMo I hear you
ask? It stands for National Novel Writing Month and it is where aspiring and
established authors sign up to write 50,000 plus words in 30 days i.e.
throughout the whole month of November.
I have been meaning to do it for several
years now, but as each November has come around I have already been working on
a project and haven’t wanted to break from it or the November diary has just
been so busy that I wouldn’t stand a chance of completing it.
This year was different though, apart from
two days the diary was empty and as November approached I made sure I kept it
that way. Plus, I was in a position to start a new work in progress, so the omens
were good. It was now or never.
In some ways it’s just a bit of fun, if you
don’t make your 50K you don’t lose anything and the great gods of NaNoWriMo
don’t strike you down with thunderbolts. In other ways it is a great help to
anyone serious about tackling a first draft.
Signing up to the site is totally free and
as you go through each day of writing you can update that day’s word count to
your grand total, which is then plotted on a bar chart so you can easily see
how you are progressing. Once you have completed your profile you sign up to a
home region in your location. For me this wasn’t that easy as there wasn’t a
group for Surrey, so I simply waded into the London group…I did live there for
nearly thirty years so I reckoned that would get me an entry pass. Within your
region various write ins are set up in cafes and other locations so that you
can go along and meet fellow WriMoers who are rising to the challenge and maybe
find a writing buddy. You can also collect milestone badges along the way too.
So how did it work for me? Pretty darned
good! I am naturally quite competitive so although you are only really competing
against yourself I set my sights on the bar chart…it HAD to go up every day and
either meet the daily target of 1667 words a day or exceed it. I also pitched
myself against other WriMoers in my region; they had no idea of course. Your
total word count is given at the foot of your profile photo and as their counts
rose each day mine had to rise higher and then as 50,000 came closer I had to get there
first.
After 26 days I had written 50,297 words of
a new first draft and gained my winner’s certificate! This is the fastest I
have ever written 50,000+ words, if left to my own devices I can be one of the
world’s best procrastinators, there’s always room for just one more cup of tea
before I sit down to write…
I still have a way to go though, this first
draft needs to be around 90-100,000 words before I can see it finished and ready
for the first edits. As I am quite a detailed planner I know exactly what is
going to happen in the rest of the book so I hope I can keep the momentum up
after the end of November. The next goal is a completed first draft by
Christmas. So what’s this new WIP I have been working on…well, that’s for
another blog post! ;)
If you fancy your hand writing the first
draft of the book that’s been batting around in your head for the last few
years, give it a go in 2018. Even if you don't make 50K you've at least started it and hopefully got the first few chapters under your belt.
Will I be doing it next year? Ohhhhhh Yes!
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