#14 - Kicking Myself into Gear

My writing has been seriously lacking these past few months, so I decided to do something rash to kick myself back into gear.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo. For those of you who don't know what that is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. I believe this is the ninth year they've held the event, and it always happens in November, although the exercise would work just as well in any other month.

The biggest reason to sign up officially and write a novel in November is that it gives you some accountability to actually get it done. Since you're working alongside the other tens of thousands of people who signed up officially on the NaNoWriMo website, there is extra pressure to succeed.

I did a quick calculation of all the days I have available to write in November and figured I need to write 2000 words a day, Monday-Saturday, for the entire month of November in order to complete my novel and "win" the contest.

I did exceed my 2000-word goal yesterday by a few words, and I just finished hitting my goal for today this evening. When I came to the point where I'd written enough words, I found that I didn't want to stop. I had to finish my thought, which added an extra 150 words or so to my daily total. I'm not going to use that as an excuse to slack on Monday, of course. Every day, I plan to write 2000 words. I want to be sure I not only hit the 50,000-word requirement, but I want to blow it away.

Okay, we'll see how long that enthusiasm keeps up. I've heard it gets especially hard in week 2. I'll be checking in regularly with my status on the novel, so watch for exciting updates as the month proceeds. :)