So I’ve learned fairly recently that November is National Novel Writing Month, physician also known as NaNoWriMo.
And I thought, discount wow, symptoms that’s REALLY cool. A whole month dedicated to the writing of a novel.
There’s a whole website for it too, which you can check out here.
However, the more I checked it out, the more that I realized…its just not for me. I don’t really agree with it.
See, the idea of it is to write any entire 50,000 page novel in the span of one month. And I just really understand that. For one thing, I’m a busy girl. It will never take me only a couple months to write a novel. Ever. It just won’t. I have this blog to run, I have friends and my boyfriend. I love going to various events like book signings and movie premieres, and I like watching my television shows. Plus, I’m a full time student and November is a big month, with finals just right around the corner. I can’t risk that kind of crazy haha.
But I also just think the idea of writing a novel in one month is silly. Now maybe you don’t agree with me, and you’re taking part in the official NaNoWriMo and that’s okay! More power to you. But its just not me. I don’t agree with the idea of rushing a novel, and a short one at that.
And okay, I can see you all getting snippy at me. I know that the sort of novel you’re writing can determine the word count that you typically would write. If you’re writing a middle grade, 50,000 probably tends to be on the higher end. If you’re writing a YA, it *could* be okay, but its on the low end, definitely. If its an adult novel, its definitely too short.
Plus…like I said, it just feels WAY too rushed to me. There doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on actually writing a GOOD novel, more just writing to reach the finish line of 50K words. You get a nice little certificate and all of that. But you could literally just write the same paragraph, hell, even the same word, over and over again and that could be counted. There’s no judging. There’s no learning or growing or anything. Its more…who can writing 50K words that show some resemblance to an actual story in a month long period. It just doesn’t seem to be…productive or efficient or really helpful in any way.
Now I’m not insulting it, so I hope the people of NaNoWriMo don’t come after me, but I just don’t really like the idea of it. Its not me, and its not a lot of writers.
But I decided that as an aspiring novelist, as a writer, I couldn’t just ignore the idea. Even though its an internet based thing, I think its a great idea. Even though writers should write, write, write, all the time, any day and any month of the year, a month to refocus and regroup on a novel, and set those goals and meet some goals is a great idea.
So I’ve kind of created my own NaNoWriMo. My goal for November as a novel writing month is to focus on my novel, to set a goal of a certain amount of words that I want to reach and then focus on different parts of writing a novel. I want to test my characters, I want to develop strategies for writing and overcoming writer’s block. I want you guys to get to know my story, and in turn, I’ll become more confident in my own story.
So basically I’m going to spend this month, honing in on my focus on my novel, and getting better at it, and hopefully helping you guys to get better too!
My goal is to be at 20K words by the end of the month, and to have developed most of the story, in my head, or in a plot outline, so that I’ll have direction for the rest of it. I’m aiming on about 80K words, so I definitely think I can do this, and I already have about 5,000 written so let’s see if we can do this.
Throughout the month, I’ll be posting updates on my own novel writing, here and on Facebook and Twitter (so follow me on both!) and I’ll be exploring different strategies, advices and ideas to help get over some of the bumps in the road in writing a novel.
I hope you can join me on this journey! Feel free to write along with me, as I spend the month of November working on my novel and becoming a better writer :)
My Posts for NaNoWriMo
November 1st: Where I Write
November 4th: Meeting the Main Characters of my Novel: Katy, Ash, Madison, Frank, Jennifer, and Razi
November 6th: Best Writing Advice I’ve Been Given
November 8th: Having a Book Bible
November 11th: Character Interviews
November 13th: How to Deal with Writer’s Block
November 15th: Its the Halfway Point! Update, Struggles/Successes!
November 18th: Writing Inspirations
November 20th: Character Playlists
November 22nd: Free Write: My Characters Celebrate Thanksgiving
November 25th: Meeting my Characters in Artwork
November 27th: Setting up and Meeting Goals
November 29th: My Experience with NaNoWriMo
November 30th: Excerpt from my Novel…So Far
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Happy Writing Everyone!