NOVELMBER BEGINS

We are setting goals and meeting them every damn day this month. It's not too late to join in.

Hey team—Today is the first day of Novelmber. If you’re new here and want to join in, all details are below.

Meanwhile—a whole bunch of you already added yourselves to the Great Google Novelmber Spreadsheet, and I have a genius idea for that—when you meet your goal of the day, highlight your line in the color of the day. First to meet a goal gets to pick the color! Also allowed: changing your color on what you affirmatively decided yourself was a day off. (Honestly just hitting the spreadsheet and thinking about it might be a worthy goal some days.)

I sat for the 2 hours of the write-along and it was painful and I looked at the clock a lot, but I also wrote down a few ideas and then, in honor of the section of Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals that I read last night, I picked something and started. It’s Day 8 of his 4 weeks (I’m reading one a night when I’m home, so it’s not been continuous) and Burkeman said,

[O]ur focus this week is on the art of taking imperfect action…go looking for some kind of decision you could make. And then make it.

So I did, reminding myself that I plan to play with three different ideas, so this isn’t permanent. It’s just a start. Of something. I handwrote 4 notebook pages, which I will use ChatGPT to convert to text because I can, and maybe they’re a thing I’ll edit eventually. Hope your Day One was a success but if not… move on! Day two awaits.

The next write-alongs:

Tuesday, November 5, 2:00-4:00

Friday, November 8, 9:00-11:00

All times EST, all write-alongs in my Zoom Room. More times coming. Also coming soon: MY AWESOME NOVEMBER STICKERS. But I have to save something, right?

The join-up details:

Join me for Novelmber, which is very hard to pronounce but is my word for reclaiming my writing space in November. Think NaNoWriMo, our version—daily challenges and stretch goals, formatted by you, for you.

There will be write-alongs, posts, a massive Google spreadsheet for sharing goals and updating progress, thoughts on how hard this is, and more than you want to know about why I need this regroup so badly. All writers, every genre, welcome.

This is sign-up only—I don’t plan to spam the whole #AmWriting community with my wails of writerly distress daily for an entire month—but it’s also for everyone who wants in. I hope you’ll join me—I don’t want to go this alone!

This is open to all, any genre (although it’s lovely if you support the podcast with your $$, please do, upgrade to paid HERE).

Don’t worry, signing up is simple! Here’s how:

Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, toggle “Novelmber” from “off” (grey) to “on” (orange). (Amusingly, you can also UPGRADE TO PAID in this very same spot! Fancy that!)

THAT’S IT!

Once you set that up, you’ll get all future Novelmber emails. Any audio or video will show up in those, along with write-along schedules.

You’ll also want to add yourself to the Google Sheet where we’ll all record our overall goal, day’s goals, daily progress and what we’re feeling. I’ve started it off.

I also launched a chat HERE, let’s see how that goes. You can join in any time.