Oh no... this is the one I've been dreading all year.... "November Write a Novel in a Month" month.
Gulp.
I've brushed this challenge off month after month, thinking "it's ages away, don't worry, you'll come up with something", but "ages away" is upon me and "come up with something" has become "COME UP WITH ANYTHING!!".
As I said, gulp.
Dubbed NaNoWriMo by those in the US (National Novel Writing Month), it runs the month of November and gives you 30 days to write 50,000 words - that's 1,666.7 words per day.
There are a few rules naturally. You can't write the same word 50,000 times (bummer), you have to start from scratch and all you can do in advance is plan your outline and do some research. You have to be the sole author and it has to be a novel (lengthy work of fiction).
Sounds simple right? If you're organised maybe. I've been telling myself for the whole of October to get organised and prepare. Did I? Of course not! Luckily during one lengthy decent of a Javanese volcano in February I came up with the basic outline of the story, and weirdly, the title. When we reached the tent I pulled out my trusty red Moleskine and brain dumped. So I guess that's research right?
But how do you write a novel? Where do you start? I start by tapping 'how to write a novel' into my iPad over breakfast on November 1st. Apparently you need an outline. What's an outline? Hmmm... clearly I have some due diligence to do.
So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to spend the weekend doing my outline and start writing on Monday. That gives me 25 days to write 50,000 words, which happens to be a nice round 2,000 words per day.
For perspective, I've written about 300 words in this post so far... so another seven times that, per day.
Gulp.
Gulp.
I've brushed this challenge off month after month, thinking "it's ages away, don't worry, you'll come up with something", but "ages away" is upon me and "come up with something" has become "COME UP WITH ANYTHING!!".
As I said, gulp.
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| Image by hummyhummy @ FlickR |
Dubbed NaNoWriMo by those in the US (National Novel Writing Month), it runs the month of November and gives you 30 days to write 50,000 words - that's 1,666.7 words per day.
There are a few rules naturally. You can't write the same word 50,000 times (bummer), you have to start from scratch and all you can do in advance is plan your outline and do some research. You have to be the sole author and it has to be a novel (lengthy work of fiction).
Sounds simple right? If you're organised maybe. I've been telling myself for the whole of October to get organised and prepare. Did I? Of course not! Luckily during one lengthy decent of a Javanese volcano in February I came up with the basic outline of the story, and weirdly, the title. When we reached the tent I pulled out my trusty red Moleskine and brain dumped. So I guess that's research right?
But how do you write a novel? Where do you start? I start by tapping 'how to write a novel' into my iPad over breakfast on November 1st. Apparently you need an outline. What's an outline? Hmmm... clearly I have some due diligence to do.
So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to spend the weekend doing my outline and start writing on Monday. That gives me 25 days to write 50,000 words, which happens to be a nice round 2,000 words per day.
For perspective, I've written about 300 words in this post so far... so another seven times that, per day.
Gulp.
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