National Novel Writing Month AKA Nanowrimo

It’s good to know I’ll be writing 1660 words a day, every day, for a month. Nanowrimo is awesome.

Well, National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) started today and even though I am not officially joining in, I’m still going to increase my daily word count to 1600 or so. I usually aim for 1100, and have been consistent on that for about a month, so this is not a huge leap.

I’m working on my current WIP, breaking the supposed rules, but hey, it’s my Nanowrimo, I can do what I like.

Day one, then, and I’m at a tricky part of the book where a lot of things need to be worked out or I’ll end up writing myself into a corner (like last time).

I also have the aim to write the big climax this week, the giant stuff, the stuff which the cover has been promising the reader all along. Too often I think that I am very good at build up, and then go, Yeah, so they fought the Scary Enemy, done, now let’s carry on with witty banter and a hint of book two.

Not good enough. If you don’t deliver on the thing you’ve been building up to (true love, demon on demon battle scene, the storm which wipes clean the polluted earth…) then why would the reader bother?

So this week I’m all about the endings and climaxes of this book. Yes, endings, in Week One, because there are various things happening and they all need some kind of resolution, even if it involves setting up a new problem for next time.

It’s half past nine in the morning of 1st November and I’ve quickly dashed off 979 incoherent words. Not bad.* Next is a creepy underground scene. Go!

(I’m not going to blog every day. Or I might. But if I do it will be brief. And end with a Lesson Learned or Thing to Try. Like this:

  1. Use Nanowrimo however you want. It’s a productivity tool. I’ve ‘won’ it lots of times and it helped me, especially with confidence, but now I need more than that, I need to become a Finisher. So I’m using it to complete my WIP. You should use this month however you want. Nobody’s judging.

*And if I like I can even include these words as part of my daily tally. Taps nose and winks. Why not?

National Novel Writing Month