NaNoWriMo

The rollercoaster of novel prepping and writing

Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash

I have been quiet on Medium lately and will be for the month of November because I have gone a little bit crazy. Well, that’s subjective, but I have committed to doing the NaNoWriMo challenge this year.

For those of you who have not gone crazy, NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month) is an online writing challenge that happens every November. Participants are encouraged to write a novel of 50000 words over that month (1667 words per day). There are online resources and forums for support in this endeavour. NaNoWriMo started in 1999 and has grown in popularity since then, now hosting 100s of 1000s of writers each year in their quest to write a novel.

When I started writing and publishing on Medium earlier this year, I did so primarily as a way to practice my writing skills and voice. Most of my Medium writing has been personal essays, book reviews and some short fiction. I had a vague idea for a novel that I was thinking of working on as a long term project (perhaps in a few years when my non-fiction and short fiction skills were more honed) but then I was talking to someone about NaNoWriMo and so I thought…why not now?

Indeed, why wait five years to write that literary masterpiece? Carpe diem, something something. There is a common trap among writers, as well as…