NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is the short term for “National Novel Writing Month” where writers try to write 50,000 words of a novel in November. That averages to 1,667 words per day! I first started writing in the fall of 2015 and was happy to discover the NaNoWriMo challenge. It was a great motivator to push through and write a draft without overthinking things. There is a community of other writers you can connect with. And if you “win” you get discounts and freebies for fun writerly stuff.

I participated in NaNoWriMo for several years with varying degrees of success. But after I had my third kid, I was too overwhelmed to write novels, and so I devoted all my writing time to picture books. Now that my kids are a little older, my brain is open to the possibility of writing another novel. I’m going to use NaNoWriMo as a motivator to get this book drafted by the end of November. Now, my novel is going to be a novel in verse, so it won’t be near the 50,000 words I would need to win, but if I can finish my draft by the end of November, I’m counting it as a personal win!!!

Do you have any major writing goals you’d like to achieve this year? Even if it’s not to write a novel, maybe you can set a personal goal and use the camaraderie of NaNoWriMo to help you achieve it. If you need the push in a different time of year, “Camp” NaNoWriMo happens a couple of other times through the year and has a similar sense of community and motivation.

Visit the NaNoWriMo website at the link below and sign up! You can do it!
https://nanowrimo.org/national-novel-writing-month