NaNoWriMo

November 1 marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. Stephen and I have decided to join in the fun. The idea is to write an entire first draft of a novel in 30 days. Sounds fun right? I thought so. I don't know if we will remain that ambitious, but our goal is to write at least 1,000 words a day. That is a goal that we can definitely obtain, in theory, if we keep at it. That way we would have at least 30,000 words, which is a pretty good start to a novel. It is at least more than either of us have ever had before.

[photo credit]

I have always wanted to write a novel. And for once I feel like I can actually complete that goal. I have been working on my rough draft for about a month already, not writing everyday, but keeping the thoughts flowing. Before today I had 18,243 words. Generally speaking I've ready you want to have at least 200,000 for a solid 300-ish page novel. That seems like a daunting task. However, 18 hundred words towards the same novel idea is already a record for me.

The point is, I'm excited. This is a challenge to not only keep thoughts flowing, but to write a good chunk everyday to keep the novel moving forward. Hopefully by this time next year, I will be talking about how to publish a novel instead of writing one.

There is a website dedicated to this particular challenge: http://www.nanowrimo.org. It is a cool place for writers to get local inspiration and encouragement as well as editor support and a general kick in the butt to start writing.

If any other writers are already doing this challenge or any who want to start, I would love to encourage each other. As it is, I'm not planning on boring you with too much writing jargon, but I am going to use my blog as a sort of record as to how I'm progressing for this month.

NaNoWriMo Progress:

Nov 1
starting count: 18,243
end count: 20,263
Total words added today: 2020
Goal MET!