Have y’all heard of NanoWrimo? I’m sure a lot of you have, but for those of you who haven’t NanoWrimo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It occurs every year in November. Writers from all over the world, thousands upon thousands of writers, sign up and sit down to pound out 50,000 words in one month. That’s roughly 1667 words a day for 30 days.
Some people hate it, others love it. Most are addicted and have no idea why they keep coming back year after year.
I’ve participated six of the last seven years under three different names (something about losing passwords and forgetting my login info)
One thing I’ve learned is it’s maddening when you fall behind on the daily count, but it’s also fun. And there is a great sense of accomplishment when you meet hit that fifty thousandth word.
You may think pushing that kind of count in a month is ridiculously insane and nobody could possibly produce a decent story doing so. Well, I’m here to tell you differently. First, to some authors 50,000 a month is a drop in the bucket for them, for others, like me, 50,000 words is a huge feat. I’ve finished four or five of those six years and two of those books (The Guardian’s Promise and The Warrior’s Princess) are scheduled to be published with Love Inspired Historical. Hopefully a third will find its way to a contract soon.
You know what? I’m not the only one. There are a lot of NaNo books that have sold to traditional publishing housing, including Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Many more have sold to smaller houses, others of have hit the Indie’s bestseller list (Independent publishing). Here’s a list of published works written during NaNoWriMo. Since I just sent the staff of my soon to be published books they aren’t listed yet.
So, yeah, y’all can do this too!
You can write a novel in a month!
You can publish that novel!
Who is going to join me?