It is that time again. I have decided to participate this time. I have tried this a couple of times before, but didn’t do all that well. So, I am going to try again.
For those of you that don’t know, NANOWRIMO is short for National Novel Writing Month. It is an annual event in which participants try to draft a full novel over the month of November. In the context of this it is a minimum of 50,000 words. This translates to about 1,670 words a day. You “win” by making your word count.
I have been setting on a story idea for some time and I figured this was the best way to complete a draft. I have also decided that I am going to do a writing blog during this process. I don’t know if I am going to write every day, but I will try to update every week. Since this has just started, and I finished writing for the day, I felt it was also a good time to start the blog. So here I am.
One of the keys to a successful NANOWRIMO is to prepare ahead of time. As I said, I have been setting on this idea for a while, so I already had most of the characters thought up and the basic outline written down. I got everything in place so that I could hit the ground running. As such I am in a pretty good place. First day of writing is done and I am at almost 2,000 words. I feel like it is a really good start.
Since I have the whole story outlined, I might jump around. In the past I have written chronologically, meaning I wrote chapter by chapter in order. I will probably do that again just because it is what I know, but if the mood hits me I might jump around. The important thing is I don’t want to lose too much steam.
I am early in the writing process, day 1 to be precise. I know the excitement will be strong for the next few days, even this first week. But I will come to a point when I might have to force myself to write. If that happens, then I am going to need a way to keep focused. If that means skipping to an exciting part of the book, then I will. I want to finish this year, no matter what.
So, this is the first post of this series. Wish me luck!