This month is Nanowrimo. For those of you who have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about, don’t worry, you’re not alone. There are a lot of people that have never heard of this.
Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. There is a website that engages the writing community to write 50,000 words in a single month: nanowrimo.org. This is supposed to be a way to give a writer a swift kick in the ass and get you back into gear. Ultimately, getting words on the page.
A lot of people think they have to be pretty words. Incorrect! They just have to be words that make sense. You can always go back and make them pretty. Fixing and editing, at least for me, is way easier than staring at a blank page.
Almost every year, I sit down and log in. I set my project – which for me has been four different books between 2011-2019. You can see by the number of projects as compared to the number of years how successful I’ve been.
The first, I finished but it wasn’t very good. So, there it sits in my dropbox, waiting for me to revisit and rework.
The second, was never finished. Again, still waiting on me to finish.
The third was Hereditary Magic. I FINISHED IT. And, like 10 of you read it, so there’s that.
The fourth is Residual Magic…here’s hoping. I’ll be honest though, I’m already behind in writing this one and nanowrimo was my plan to get back on track. For the first few days, usually, I’m good. Then life and work gets in the way. This year was no exception. Listen, I’m fucking busy.
Here are my stats from nanowrimos of years past:
2011 – 50,116/50,000 – Yay! This is me winning nanowrimo
2012 – Sike, I didn’t participate
2013 – 18,864/50,000 – EPIC FAIL!
2014 – Bahahaha!
2015 – Scarlett was like 6 months old. Nothing got done other than working, feeding, and sleeping. NOTHING. AT. ALL.
2016 – okay, this is it. This is the year I’m back to writing 3 books a year. 4,230/50,000 Okay, not so much.
2017 – 11,229/50,000 – I’m starting to see a pattern. However, this one was actually Hereditary Magic. I did eventually finish it and publish it, just not in this time frame.
2018 – Bahahahaaha again. Actually, I think I forgot.
2019 – Here we go. I’m off to a bangin’ start… 1,604/50,000 in SEVEN DAYS.
I should be putting words down on the page right now. Instead, I’m writing this blog because in seminar after seminar, they keep telling us that consistency and content are important to readers. Can I count these words toward nanowrimo? That would be cheating…I guess.
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