How many of you have heard of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month? (Yes, I’m talking to you as if you were sitting right here with me. And I expect you to talk to me too! That’s what the comment section was made for). For those of you who’ve not heard of it, it’s a great way to get a story out of your head and onto paper in one massive brain dump. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write at least 50,000 words during the month of November. That’s the average length of a novel. It happens every year, and is attempted by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. It began in 1999 and has expanded every year. Now there are even a couple “Camp NaNo” events, in April and July, that allow you to set your own word count or editing goal.
I’m in the middle of the July Camp NaNo. Since I’ve been trying to get this site up and running, I decided my goal should be to write at least 20 blog posts, with a total of 15,000 words for the month. I’m not there. In fact, I’m nowhere near.
After having written over 50,000 words a month for the last five or six Novembers, even last year when I had Covid-19 in November, a goal of only 15,000 words seems pretty easy. Well, let me tell you, it’s not! Trying to come up with 500-750 publishable words a day, five days a week, is not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. It should get better as I start wrapping my mind around the concept a bit more, but for right now, my brain is more warped than it is wrapped.
While my eventual goal is to produce a Distractifying! post every day, I’ll be happy with whatever I produce to begin with. Once I get into the swing of things, I’ll set up my own, personal Camp NaNo’s to keep me going each month. I’m determined this time, to do whatever it takes to stay in the flow.
How you doing so far?