Thursday, November 22, 2007

NaNoWriMo Almost Over

Anybody out there participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo? I'm not sure how many people signed up this year, but in 2006, 79,000 people did. And thirteen thousand of them made it to the 50,000 word mark in one month.

Clearly, 50,000 words in one month means you're not doing a lot of editing. But polish is not the point. Writing is.

If you missed out on signing up at the beginning of November, it's not too late to try your hand at it. Make your own commitment now. See if for the next week, you can write 2,000 words per day. Not outline or do character sketches or edit, but write.

I know one person who's participating. Again. This is not her first year. She has a full-time, high pressure job, yet she's still making the time to write. If she doesn't get her 2,000 words on a particular day, then she makes it up on another day.

Think of it. One month and you have 50,000 words. When you finish, you can pat yourself on the back and put away the manuscript. Or you can continue your push and get it finished to 80,000 words or 100,000 or whatever you want. Or you can begin editing and polishing with the idea of publishing it.

No matter what you do, you can be proud of yourself for trying, whether you did it for a full month or only for the next week.

Two NOTES from Helen:
1. Thank you to everyone who dropped by Straight From Hel, to read the guest post by Susan Wittig Albert.

Susan has written a follow-up about her experience with the blog tour in a post on Blog Book Tours. If you’re a writer and thinking about doing a blog book tour, you’ll find some great information and insight in the post.

2. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

2 comments:

  1. I'm participating. I've done it every year since 2004 and have won each time. I'm on schedule to make my 50K this year. Happy writing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congratulations! That's wonderful. That really is an accomplishment to be proud of -- and not once, but four times.

    ReplyDelete

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