Do you know what Nanowrimo is short for? National Novel Writer’s Month, which is now international. You try to write a 50 thousands words of a brand new novel in one month, November. It sounds like a tremendous undertaking, but every year many people from all over the world complete it.
When you do Nano (Nanowrimo) you have to switch off the internal editor inside your head. You must write without editing. It doesn’t matter if what you write is no good, it forces you to get that word count up. It isn’t really that much it is 1776 words per day.
The first few times I tried Nano, I didn’t get it done. I got a few thousand even once up to 15 000 but never the 50 000. But now I have a few ideas of novels that I have started. Even if that is all you do, is get a novel idea. And 50 000 doesn’t have to be your top limit.
It feels so good when you accomplish that 50 000 word mark. You see it tick over on the bottom of your word document. To know you had a simple idea and it turned into a story. Last year I said to myself I can’t really do Nano, I have too many unfinished novels to work on. Though I got talking to someone and said if I did do Nano I would name my character Jet.
Now I had no idea what Jet’s name was, I knew it was his initials but that was it. So I used Google to find names starting with E, I could only think of a few. The first name that came up was “Eagle”. That name gave me the whole heritage and idea of who Jet was going to be.
I had an idea of how my two main characters would meet (I write romances). Apart from that I had no idea where is was going to be headed. More have come out, so it has turned into more of a mystery than I had expected.
Nano can be great, I made myself a word count goal for the first day last year. 5 000 words, the next day was over 4 000. It gave myself a bit of buffer which I think is helpful and I ended up winning Nano a day early.
Your days get busy and I made sure I had a few meals ready, that I could just take out of the freezer. It is also good to have support and hope that your family won’t mind if you neglect them and the house for just that one month.
I went to a Nano meeting in my area. That gave me close to 4 000 words on that day. There are support groups. I know this year there is a meeting about writing a novel in my area, but it’s on a day I can’t go.
This year I most likely won’t attempt it, but my goal this year is to finish one or two of my novels, one of my previous Nano attempts. There is still a few more days and things can change.
Consider Nano, get your character names and their features straight, the setting. Maybe write a brief outline. You can do all of this, just not start the writing of the first chapter until the 1st of November. The website has more information on it.
Good luck if that is what you want to do
Melanie Carter Winkler
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
When you do Nano (Nanowrimo) you have to switch off the internal editor inside your head. You must write without editing. It doesn’t matter if what you write is no good, it forces you to get that word count up. It isn’t really that much it is 1776 words per day.
The first few times I tried Nano, I didn’t get it done. I got a few thousand even once up to 15 000 but never the 50 000. But now I have a few ideas of novels that I have started. Even if that is all you do, is get a novel idea. And 50 000 doesn’t have to be your top limit.
It feels so good when you accomplish that 50 000 word mark. You see it tick over on the bottom of your word document. To know you had a simple idea and it turned into a story. Last year I said to myself I can’t really do Nano, I have too many unfinished novels to work on. Though I got talking to someone and said if I did do Nano I would name my character Jet.
Now I had no idea what Jet’s name was, I knew it was his initials but that was it. So I used Google to find names starting with E, I could only think of a few. The first name that came up was “Eagle”. That name gave me the whole heritage and idea of who Jet was going to be.
I had an idea of how my two main characters would meet (I write romances). Apart from that I had no idea where is was going to be headed. More have come out, so it has turned into more of a mystery than I had expected.
Nano can be great, I made myself a word count goal for the first day last year. 5 000 words, the next day was over 4 000. It gave myself a bit of buffer which I think is helpful and I ended up winning Nano a day early.
Your days get busy and I made sure I had a few meals ready, that I could just take out of the freezer. It is also good to have support and hope that your family won’t mind if you neglect them and the house for just that one month.
I went to a Nano meeting in my area. That gave me close to 4 000 words on that day. There are support groups. I know this year there is a meeting about writing a novel in my area, but it’s on a day I can’t go.
This year I most likely won’t attempt it, but my goal this year is to finish one or two of my novels, one of my previous Nano attempts. There is still a few more days and things can change.
Consider Nano, get your character names and their features straight, the setting. Maybe write a brief outline. You can do all of this, just not start the writing of the first chapter until the 1st of November. The website has more information on it.
Good luck if that is what you want to do
Melanie Carter Winkler
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
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