Nanowrimo 2017 - Halfway There!

Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

This year me and Nanowrimo have been getting along just fine.

I participate in this writing challenge along with hundreds of thousands of others every year. Our collective goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Yes, it seems crazy to some, but to me it is just pure fun.

So far, I only have a one in four completion rate, but that is all going to change this year. Today marks the halfway point on day, but I am well over half way on my word count. I have already exceeded 30,000 words and I'm still writing over two thousand a day (well, on average at least).

However, with the holidays just around the corner, I have to keep my foot on the petal and keep my momentum going. I am very excited to see some friends and family to celebrate Thanksgiving this year, but it always poses a challenge for completing this project. Thankfully, I have some awesome family that understands my life as a writer and hopefully won't mind much when I slip away for an hour or so and enter in my word count.

Enjoying my local coffee shop to add to my word count!
#Nanowrimo #theworldneedsyournovel

I really do love this project and find a joy in creating new content. Especially when I write this intensely for this long, the characters seem to come alive and build a story all of their own. It is one of the most interesting things about writing fiction. I enjoy just stepping back to let the story unfold.

This magic of writing has incited me my entire life. I am never as happy as when I can sit down and just let my thoughts flow onto a page. Some words are for others to read and some are simply for myself.

There is this quote by Angela Carter: "Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. you bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms."

To me, writing is kind of like that too, especially when I can get "in the zone" of a new project. The characters just flow onto the page without me ever really having a clear understanding of how they get there. I bring the parts of myself and mix them with this magical property that we humans use to create. Somewhere along the way a novel is born.

Now I just have to figure out how to edit a document with a length greater than a blog post so others can actually read these creations that has made their way from my head to the page. That is the next step.

Right now, I am focused on Nanowrimo and my goal of 50,000 words before December 1st. I can do it, I know I can.

If you are participating in Nanowrimo as well, then you can do it too! I believe in you, now comes the hard part...believe in yourself.

Happy Writing!