“Holy shit, I’m doing NANOWRIMO this year….”
In other words, “what thee HELL did I get myself into?” She says in a slight Irish accent.
Seriously, though. It’s kind of, or lots of crazy up in here. What is Nanowrimo, you might ask? Take it away, Google!
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.
Brilliant. So, hundreds of thousands of us apparently lose our damn minds and are determined to bust out 50,000 words in 30 days. At least, it’s genius to have this accountability and community while losing said damned minds. I’m actually really excited. I have watched from a distance many rally hard towards this novel goal for at least three Novembers now and always wondered if I’d have the mental stamina and time to participate myself. My good friend (and CoffeeReadingWriting business partner) Melody, has participated before and pitched doing it together this year. At first, it was a fleeting thought. I would think about it but kind of left it at that. She asked again recently and I just so happen to have gotten a premise and concept for a new contemporary story. That’s when I felt more prepared to dive in with only three weeks to spare.
Here we are, less than a week away from this crazy endeavor and time has kind of slipped from me with work and stuff. I’m trying not to freak out. For the most part, I have a pretty solid story to work with but being this is my first year, I would like to be more prepared. Tomorrow’s Wednesday, which is usually CRW work days with Melody and then I work at the paint studio Friday through Sunday. Yikes. I decided that leaves Thursday to say “LEAVE ME ALONE WORLD”, stock up on snacks, lots of coffee and use the entire day to outline and prep for Sunday…HOLY GUACAMOLE, Sunday is day one of NANO!
The super awesome and talented Melody did something pretty freaking awesome and made book covers for our NanoWrimo entries to have in our profile. I absolutely love what she did for mine. It encompasses the theme of the book beautifully!
Wanna see? Check out both of our NanoWrimo profiles to check out our novel titles, covers, and synopses.
Are you participating this year? If so, let’s be buddies! I’m already working on two other projects; one, I’m editing, the other, I’m drafting. Going into an entirely new project seems crazy right now but unlike my main two WIP (works-in-progress), this new one for November is an adult contemporary. My other projects are dystopian or post-apocalyptic supernatural which require crazy world-building and intricate plots. I’m actually excited to delve into a contemporary story for the first time. Well, first time in novel form. In the past, I used to write tons of contemporary screenplays (movie scripts), but the process is completely different.
I feel I need this to get me out of this writing rut I’ve been on. Granted, life has kind of gotten out of hand on my end here so that’s affected it as well but it’s been frustrating having these stories in your head, wanting to get penned but for x, y reason, nothing.
One confession I will make about that is Editing. The editing process, when doing it for the first time is overwhelming and discouraging. It totally stumped me and kind of snuffed out any motivation. It’s why I’m glad to step back from that and dive into Nano this month. I’m hoping those juices and adrenaline will kick-start things to get back into a consistent groove of writing and less avoiding.
GOOD LUCK to all participants! Let’s kick NanoWrimo ass!
COUNT DOWN: T-MINUS FOUR DAYS
Melody and I just did a video for our business channel about, “The Writing Process”, where we shared ours. Check it out!
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