Monday, November 01, 2010

Happy Freakin' November!

To say that November is my favorite month of the year would be an understatement. I love walking in the morning when the air turns crisp and the leaves turn color. Who doesn't love Thanksgiving? Mostly, I love November because it's the "No" in NaNoWriMo. :D

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) where writers all over the world set out to write 50,000 words in 30 days. This is no small task, let me tell you from personal experience. Writing 1667 words per day for a whole month can be one of the hardest things you ever do in your life. I should know, I'm doing this for the seventh time.

It's never to late to start if you've ever wanted to write a book, but have just been waiting for the right motivation. Visit the NaNoWriMo site, sign-up and check out the many wonderful resources and forums for inspiration and commiseration. There are forums for pretty much every part of the U.S. and many locations around the globe as well.

This year, because I'm extra crazy, I'm trying to do double the damage and write 100,000 words during the month of November, which breaks down to 3,333 words per day, which with the way I write is a commitment of two and a half to three hours on a good day and maybe four or five hours on a slow day. In an effort to get ahead of the game, I now have a tradition of staying up late and starting writing at a couple minutes past midnight on the first of November. It's a tradition only two years old, but one I like. I don't "pull an all-nighter", I just try to get in a good hour or two to kick things off and set the tone. This year went quite well until the computer mysteriously crashed at 2:22 - can that time be a coincidence? Fortunately between my obsessive saving and OpenOffice.org's automatic back-up I only lost about a hundred words, which I replace with 3oo before going to bed. So, take that Microsoft.

With several hours more of writing planned for after dinner, I am sitting at the 5,484 mark as of htis posting. Viva le NaNo!

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