It's that time of year again when many authors make a promise that this year they will finish their work-in-progress or write the Great American Novel. Some authors have prepared the last two weeks by creating character charts, preparing an outline or prepping by doing world building. How about you? Do you plan to participate in NanoWriMo 2020?
If you're unfamiliar with the term NaNoWriMo, it's stands for National November Writing Month. You can find more information about the process at the NaNoWriMo, a non-profit organization to help writers find their voices and achieve their writing goals. The goal is for writers to write a whole novel during the month, with a novel length of fifty-thousand words. (50,000 words) They hope the writer will make enough progress toward completing a novel they won't hesitate to finish it.
When I was working full time the NanoWriMo experience scared me. Not because I couldn't write that much, it was just another commitment that I needed to make to take away time and cause me stress. NanoWriMo always fell on a month that I already started experiencing an extra night a week to choir practice, time planning Christmas and Thanksgiving parties and all the things that go on around the holidays starting in late November. This also explains why more than half the writers that start NaNoWriMo, don't finish.
This year I have more time than ever. The church choir can't sing because of Covid. I'm not working, because Covid has destroyed the industry I work in and I'm more committed than ever to finish three novels in 2020 and another three novels in 2021. Big goals that require strong time manangement.
I hope you consider NaNoWriMo for your own writing goals for 2020. So what if you have to bail before Thanksgiving. You still wrote twenty, twenty-five or even thirty-five thousand words. You haven't failed, you've made a huge dent in your novel. A big win in my book.
Dust off your keyboard, open up a Word Document and start typing. Don't have time to do it at home, find a notepad type app for your phone and dictate your novel into the phone. Again search for small wins everyday. You don't have to write the whole novel in one afternoon. Set a goal you can commit to, 500 words a day, 1,000 words or even 2,500 words a day. Commit and see where it takes you. Once you start and get five days of wins under your belt you'll be going gangbusters.
I'm commiting to twenty-five hundred words a day, but I only write Monday through Friday. Total for a week will equal 12,500 words. Put together four weeks just like that and boom, you've written fifty-thousand words. I'm working on a book to use as a reader magnet. The prequel to my novel, Eclipse of the Triple Moons, the first book in the Mountain King Series. After people finish reading book one, if they stop by my author website, Adgitize Press, they'll be presented a sign up form for the prequel. If they want to join my Readers Group, (newsletter), I'll give them the prequel for free. In fact, the only way for anyone to receive the prequel will be as a member of my Readers Group. I hope to have all this worked out before the new year. No signup form on Adgitize Press yet.
Cheers. Remember to Write Everyday. Ken.