Why (and how) I'll write 50K in Novelmber.
NaNoWriMo is dead. Long Live NaNoWriMo. Want to write-along with me? Read on.
Kids, The Chicken Sisters (now an NYT best-seller, a Reese’s Book Club pick and a Hallmark series) started out as my 2017 NaNoWriMo project.
If that’s not enough to convince you that November is EXACTLY the month to write 50K words in, I don’t know what is.
The organization that launched this whole National Novel Writing Month thing is gone. A few other orgs have seized the baton, and that’s all good! There will be, as there has been since time immemorial (ok, not that long) teams and social media sprints and crowd support galore and I love that for all of us.
Here at #AmWriting, I’ll be chugging along with the goal of finishing my existing draft by November 30—so I can lead you all in Blueprint for a Revision starting January 6. I’m not going to lie: I’m daunted. I wrote 280 words today. That is… not 1667.
But I have been poking and prodding and outlining and noodling this project for far too long. It is time to fish or cut bait, and I choose to fling my line into the water. (That’s really not a great metaphor. But fine.).
Here’s what I’ve done: I’ve yanked out the calendar. I’ve designated a few days as just-barely days and a few more as full tilt days and set some word goals for these first few days. I WOULD make a plan for what I want to do when—like I suggested last time around, when I noted that for me 50K words can basically be throat-clearing and that if I want a beginning, a middle and an end I need to allocate time wisely—except that I’m currently, and most unlike my usual style, writing a random scene from the middle of this book and I think I need to respect this weird process.
Instead, I’m working on a spreadsheet with the chapters, vaguely, that I know I have to go (it’s most of the book) and made a note: nothing gets more than a day. It can be terribly written. It can be pre-written. (What’s pre-writing? Pretend you’re telling your closest colleague or friend, in detail, what you’re GOING to write. So the spaceship appears! Bob is shocked but Dale totally knew and Dale says… like that. It’s enough to know what goes there and to edit that if necessary.) Whatever I can get down on the page is enough.
This, friends, is my plan! Here’s where you come in: my plan includes, I hope, company. Community. Chat. And it absolutely includes write-alongs. This week’s will be Monday 11/3 from 10:30-12:30 Eastern and Tuesday, 11/4 from 12:00-1:30 Eastern. The times will skew East Coast, and some weekends may appear. You can be working on your November project, or whatever you’d like, and if there are questions, we’ll check in towards the end for a chat.
Write-alongs are for #AmWriting supporters but I have EXCELLENT news for you. Don’t tell Jess, Sarina or Jennie, but I created a Novelmber-only special with half-price on our usual annual membership. Do it now, and you’ll get the whole year for $50… including the upcoming winter blueprint, all the Booklabs and the ability to submit to booklab and, oh, you know the drill. Whatever we think of. This is only going to show up here, so if you read this far, you win!
The link to the Zoom Room for the write-alongs is below the paywall, so keep scrolling.
Meanwhile, NaNoWriMo has a long history around here. Want more on getting ready?
Past me even made a Prep Checklist.
KJ’s Nanowrimo Prep Checklist
Finally: What is this? AWED (AmWriting(almost)EveryDay) is me, KJ, chatting in real time about my real writing day and maybe yours too. It’s vaguely daily (like my writing career) it’s always me, it’s never pre-loaded and appearing just to shout at you and it’s my way of trying not to feel like I’m wandering alone in the wilderness. I hope it’s yours too. If you hate it, you can delete it! Or unsubscribe from just AWED (not the regular podcast posts) by clicking HERE and then unchecking it.
Zoom link below!