Counting Down: NaNoWriMo 2015

I can’t believe that it’s already October. We’re less than a month away from the biggest month of the year for many writer’s around the world.

Are you suddenly perplexed and reaching to your calendar for the answer?

You aren’t? Good, because your calendar won’t tell you the answer unless you’ve got yourself some writer friends.

NaNoWriMo starts in less than a month and I’m gearing up to start writing the first draft of my next novel. A lot of people can’t seem to get their heads around writing so many words in a month but I think I’m getting ahead of myself. A lot of you are probably thinking: What the hell is NaNoWriMo? Well you’re in luck I’m about to break it down for you.

National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo, is held annually in November and for 30 days and night, writers from all around the world participate in writing down 50,000 words to get a novella down on paper (or on screen, probably screen is better).

At your fingers you have access to your region, which is chaired by a Municipal Liaison (ML), who are like wonder fairies; you also have a plethora of resources from the forums to regional chats and so forth. It’s really a beautiful community.

50,000 words seem like a lot, hey? I thought so the first time I started it too, but when you break it down it’s only 1667 a day, every day. That’s do able for sure. It’s less than a really good essay.

And if you can’t hit 50,000 words and can only do 5,000 or 25,000, that’s okay too. Just remember that you now have more words than you did at the start of the month. That’s the aim of NaNo.

It’s also guard at quantity of writing over quality. Editing, as they say in the NaNo circles, is for December, it’s when you kick back and go through what you’ve written, weed out what’s bad and go from there. Or if you’re anything like me, you keep writing.

This year I’m aiming to hit 100,000 words again. I managed it last year and I like having an entire first draft done because I have a full body of text to edit…only with last years it wasn’t finished when I was done with it, but that was because I realised that there was still so much of the story I had to explore so I’ve had fun continuing on with my dual narrators.

A fellow coach and myself have some nifty little plans in motion, keep a watch out for it, it’ll happen fast, but until then, do you plan on trying your hand at NaNoWriMo? If you do leave me a comment I’ll be releasing my NaNo coaching package in the next few days as well, it’s geared at helping guide you through the entire month of literary abandonment!

Also don’t miss out on my coaching packages, join up to my email to hear about them first.