NaNoWriMo and Schedule

That's right. The month of craziness approaches and I can't wait. October and November will be affected on both of my blogs, so this is your warning.

What is National Novel Writing Month?
It is..."is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30." According to the rules on the web site: it has to be a "new" novel (complete redo's still count) and the first word can't be written until November 1st. No screenplays because Script Frenzy in April is for writing those.

The point of doing NaNoWriMo, in part, is to shut the inner editor up for a month and to just write. Get that novel out. Sure it is a quantity over quality exercise, but it's a first draft. First drafts are allowed to suck, so don't worry about the bad words and get that draft done (or 50,000 words or so done).
Web site: http://www.nanowrimo.org/


Personal Story
My first year of attempting NaNoWriMo was back in 2006. I failed with a total of only a few thousand words. It was my first attempt at picking a single novel and trying to write that length so it was definitely a learning experience. Haven't finished that novel but I still like the idea. 2007 went a little better when I attempted to only get 20,000 words done of a YA novel. I manged to get 14,000 of what was then called Ephram's Defiance (I'm working on the rewrite of that novel now). Not a win but the longest piece of fiction I had going at the time. Then came 2008 and my first year doing the October prep challenge on Writing.com with a romance/erotica novel. With tons of coffee and a friend coming over for the last weekend to write, I managed to get over 50,000 words done and win. My first time, and only thus far. It was awesome. I finished the first draft in december and even though it needs a rewrite, I enjoyed it. Last year I had personal things come up during the month, so I didn't really even try. This year I'm doing the novel I have wanted to do since high school, one of the first novel ideas I've had. I'm doing epic fantasy, book one of a series, and the 50,000 will only be the first half. I'm hoping to make it early and I'm using my blogs this year along with the novel writing.

I will have a schedule for both this blog and my it's in the book blog.

Schedule for this blog.

October is prep month for NaNoWriMo. The manager/creator of the October prep challenge has given me permission to post this year's prep work on my blog. I will have a blog post with each week's assignments up for those that want to try doing the prep but aren't on writing.com. I will do one week at a time to give people time to work on them and in case I want to expand on certain topics that week, like maybe one on premise, but we'll see. The prep work I do for my epic fantasy will be posted on my other blog.

November is novel writing month. Woot!  Probably won't post as often, though it's hard to tell, but will try to get some updates posted at least a few times during the month. Plan to be writing and maybe even get 50k down by the 20th of the month. The best I've done is in March of this year I wrote 50k in 15 days. We'll have to see how this year goes. Hopefully all this stuff posted on my blog for my followers to see will keep me going through the month.


Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year?