NaNoWriMo 2016

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month.  This is the month we celebrate writing and one way we do that is by cranking out at least 50,000 words in 30 days.  It's a madcap race filled with daily sprints to reach the marathon end.  I've done this off and on plenty of times over the years.  Sometimes I did it officially at the website created by the NaNoWriMo people.  Sometimes I did it unofficially because I was already in the middle of a book and just wanted to use the month to get a boatload of words out.

That last thing is me this year.  I'll be doing daily sprints to get this book I'm working on finished by the end of November.  If that means another 50K words, then it does.  If it means 40K or 60K, well it is what it is.  As long as the first draft is done by 12/1/16, I'll be happy.

I was sitting here this morning trying to figure out which of my books was a NaNo novel.  Officially, the only one y'all would be familiar with is Fertile Ground.  Unofficially, I'm fairly certain that Wish in One Hand in its first incarnation was a NaNo novel.  (It's original incarnation is a totally different book, btw.)  I wrote In Deep Wish in what I called HoHoWriMo, because I was jammed in November, so I pushed the 50K in 30 days to December. 

If you've never done it, I totally recommend it.  It's a freeing kind of thing.  In order to accomplish that many words in that short a time, you have to just write.  No editing.  No overthinking.  Put the words down on paper.  You can always edit them when you're finished.  But, like I've said before, you can't edit what you haven't written, so get writing.  LOL

If you're not a writer, I still recommend it.  Open a file and start typing.  Don't worry about structure.  Don't worry about plot.  Hell, don't even worry too much about getting all the bits right.  Just write.  You might surprise yourself.

Or to paraphrase a bit from The Carpenters... "Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to read.  Just write.  Write a book."

And on that note, I'll leave you with this starting point for my current work in progress.  I am sitting at 26772 as of this moment.  A finished first draft for me is usually 60-75K.  We'll see how many words it takes to do this story justice and whether I'll be sitting here on December 1st with a completed novel.  :fingers crossed:

Are you doing NaNo this year? If so, good luck!  You can do it!  Have you ever done NaNo?  Would you consider it if you were in the right place for it?