National Novel Writing Month, November, is the occasion on which the writer promises to attempt to write fifty thousand words of a novel in one month. This is my first time signing up to the website and I found that having somewhere that totalled up my word scores (although I do that myself), produced a graph and gave me a breakdown of how many words per day I needed to write to complete the 50K was a great spur.
Initially I wrote like there was a fire under my chair. I knew I’d have some days where I couldn’t keep to the total so I ‘banked’ extra words. This gave me leeway for the lean days. I really enjoyed the challenge and also enjoyed sharing the totals with my ‘buddies’, some of whom have made the total and others, for various reasons, haven’t. Still, we’ve written more than we would have done without the impetus of NaNoWriMo.
What next? The website is encouraging me to buy a winners’ tee-shirt. I’m so vain that I’m tempted! But I still need to finish the story. I hope to have that done by Christmas and there seem to be editing sessions in the new year, where all those who completed their novel are encouraged to take the next steps and produce a polished piece of work.
New Year’s resolution – to turn a month’s keyboard frenzy into a story worth reading.
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