NaNoWriMo 2023

September 21, 2023 writing 3

NaNoWriMo 2023 Writer

I’m signing up for NaNoWriMo again this November.

I did it last year, and while I didn’t make the goal of 50,000 words in a month, I did write over 33,000 words. Granted, it wasn’t all scenes and chapters; that word count included some brainstorming and character development. But it’s still a lot of writing. I felt like I was making good progress… and then I fell of the “daily writing” wagon once our December family vacation arrived, and despite trying several times since then, I never really climbed back on. Signing up this year is a effort to kickstart myself back into writing daily.

I am announcing my participation here because I need both encouragement and accountability. To be honest, just getting myself to write every day feels like battling a dragon. Self-doubt, perfectionism, and what I suspect may be ADHD combine to make it very hard for me to practice the Most Important Rule of Writing: BICHOK (“butt in chair, hands on keyboard.”) By stating my goals in public, I have more incentive to follow through.

The daily goal is 1666 words per day, which works out to close to 4 pages, single spaced. That’s not an insignificant amount of writing.

This year, I’m going in with more time to prepare, and a better idea of what it’s going to take.

Most important is that I can start establishing a daily writing habit, beginning now. Even if I only write 250 or 500 words in a day, just working on writing daily will help establish a pattern I can follow when November comes. (No worries about book length; I’m pretty sure this story is going to run over 75K words, and even if it doesn’t, I suspect there may be a sequel. Or a prequel. Or both.)

I’ll be working on the same book as last year, so some of the really basic prep work is already done. I still have a fair bit of research to do, some of which I can work on in October, but I’m sure more will come up as I write. (I am researching both history and mythology; it’s a historical fantasy novel and there are several distinct time periods involved.)

Another advantage is that I’m a little more familiar with the writing tools I’ll be using than I was last year (primarily Scrivener and 4TheWords, plus the Aeon Timeline app.) And I’ll be able to get back up to speed on them before November.

As for the story itself, I’m still refining my main characters, but I know them much better than I did last year. I have a better grasp of the backstory, and a slightly better sense of where the book is going than I did last year.

And finally, I have the support of an online writing community on Discord. (It’s invitation only, mostly for people who have taken one or more of Mary Robinette Kowal’s writing classes.) One of the benefits is daily co-working sessions, where you log on and then write (or work) while the other participants do the same. After 45 minutes, everyone takes a few minutes to chat before the process starts over. I find it really helpful, though I don’t always want to stop when the 45 minutes is up.

I believe I can do this.

I made good progress last year. If I can just get past the negative voice in my head, I can do even better this year.

But… it means you may not see me around much in November.

I don’t know if I will have any work projects in November. If I do, that will make it even harder to carve out the time to write. Either way, I will have to put writing ahead of blogging and even ahead of reading, in order to make the daily goal of 1666 words per day. But I’ll try to check in via the Sunday Post, if only briefly. And I hope to get at least a few reviews written and scheduled Nov. 1, too.

Click here to find out more about NaNoWriMo, or to sign up.

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