Ready, Set, Go NaNoWriMo!

By the time this posts, I’ll be two days into NaNoWriMo, the annual National Novel Writing Month event.  For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo, http://www.nanowrimo.org/, is an event where everyone competes with themselves to meet the challenge of producing 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November.  It’s a whirlwind of fingers flying on the keyboard, dishes left undone, and a firm “No” to the editor inside of you.  At the end you get the satisfaction of having pushed yourself to produce more than you ever would have in a month and, hopefully, a body of work that can be edited into your next saleable manuscript.

If you’re an aspiring author, I’d like to give you three reasons why should you consider jumping into NaNoWriMo: Production, Consistency, and Accountability.

PRODUCTION: First and foremost is to push yourself to produce. To have what it takes in this industry, you have to be able to produce books, yes, books plural, every year.  Gone is the writing career where one book a year was more of the norm.  For example, want to write for a Harlequin imprint?  An interview I had with Steeple Hill editor Melissa Endlich at RWA Nationals this year emphasized the need for authors who can produce two or three category books a year.  Writing single title?  When I look at top single title romance genre authors like Dianna Love (www.authordiannalove.com)  and Sherrilyn Kenyon (www.sherrilynkenyon.com).I see at least two releases a year and often more.

My point?  Learning to push your word count is an important skill, even if you don’t make the NaNo word count.  Think of it as exercise, you’ll build the muscles you need for later.  A bit of a writing boot camp for enlistment in the ranks of published authors.

CONSISTENCY: A second strong reason is to build consistent writing habits.  Aspiring authors can get away without writing every day, but it can create bad habits that set us up for failure when we do sell.  The only way to learn to make deadlines is to build that consistency into your writing habits.  You can get away with distractions and self-indulgence when there’s no deadline looming.  But for publication, it won’t work.  Here’s your chance to develop a daily writing habit.

ACCOUNTABILITY: Third is the fun form of accountability that’s inherent in NaNoWriMo.  When you create your free account, a fun little counter comes with it.  You and your writing buddies can follow each other’s progress with daily inputs to see how the total grows.  There are also local and regional NaNo events that you can attend where you spend time with a lot of other participants writing and consuming copious amounts of sugar and caffeine.  For myself, since I don’t live that close to any of those events, I’ve enlisted some personal writing buddies and we’ll keep up with each other on daily emails as well as our NaNo writing counters.  There’s nothing like the energy of other people to help spur you on, particularly in what is usually such a solitary endeavor.

Still not sure you can do it?  I know that some of you glazed over at the 50,000 word count for the month.  True, it’s an intimidating amount taken as a whole, but if you break it down into daily and weekly goals, it’s a little more manageable.  It’s approximately 12,500 words per week divided by the number of days you can realistically write.

Need a little extra push?   Leave me your email address and I’ll include you in my personal NaNo accountability group.  Please include your NaNo name in your email and your daily/weekly goal.  My NaNo name is dlk777.

What are you waiting for?  It’s Tuesday and you need to get those fingers flying.