National Novel Writing Month

November is National Novel Writing Month, referred to as NaNoWriMo by the cool kids. The official goal of the event is to write 50,000 words of a brand new novel. More loosely, it’s to write 50,000 of some novel (perhaps you’re finishing last year’s, or revising your current one.) Or if you’re not in the novel game, maybe just write 50,000 words. Or write a graphic novel with some constraint. In reality, it’s an event designed to get people writing and to build the habit of writing every day. The word goal is just to encourage you to silence your inner editor for a while, and let your brain throw crap on paper.

That’s exactly what I’m doing. You can keep track of my progress by going to the NaNoWriMo page (linked in the sidebar menu). There you will find a PDF of my work updated each night. I don’t have any cool live word-counter (the updates on the website require you to have an account to view), but I suppose if you really cared you could copy and paste from the PDF and check.

As of writing this post (the evening of 11/9) I’m at around 20,500 words, which is a bit ahead of pace. I’m aiming to be done around November 20 if possible, to avoid needing to do anything while traveling around Thanksgiving. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have at least another 2,000 words by the time this is posted on Monday morning, and maybe even be halfway done by Monday night.

I’m sure this is not something most people are interested in, but it can be good to have an excuse to let your creativity flow a bit more than you may allow it to, or may allow time to. For me, I’m spending most of my free time that I would normally spend on podcasts or other media just writing. It’s been fun so far, and I hope to keep up the pace.

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