NaNoWriMo

This year, I am participating in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month! The concept of NaNoWriMo is pretty simple: your goal, as a participant, is to get 50,000 words of a new novel down during the month of November. This requires writing at a pretty brisk clip (something like 1700 words a day), but considering that when I wrote my last two manuscripts, I made myself write 2000 words a day, Stephen King-style, it shouldn’t be TOO difficult.

I was initially skeptical of NaNoWriMo, when I first heard about it last year, because I figured I didn’t need it. I had just moved to South Africa, was already knee-deep into another manuscript, and didn’t need any additional motivation to hit the keyboard. I was a newly minted writing machine, after all. These days, though, as I am slowly crawling out of the pits of a writing slump, I decided I needed the kick in the butt to start a new project that NaNoWriMo provides. And so, here I am, five days in and 9700 words down. And you know? I’m feeling pretty jazzed about it! I don’t want to say too much about what I’m working on (I’m superstitious like that) but it’s a new genre for me and it’s really fun.

It’s not too late to throw your own hat into the NaNoWriMo ring. If you need inspiration, here’s a great little pep talk by one of my favorite authors, Rainbow Rowell (who, as you might recall, wrote the truly lovely Eleanor & Park).

So… who else is in?