Hello. As you may know, I have been doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) since the start of November. It hasn’t always been easy. In fact, it’s usually quite difficult to bordering on torturous to get my desired daily word count which varies from 2,000 to 4,000 words depending on how much I’ve written the day before. As someone who has only ever written short things (500 words or less usually), this month so far has been full of challenges from struggling to start writing to trying to figure out how to keep things interesting for me and my characters. You don’t realize until you’ve started writing just how many words 50,000 is and how hard it is to keep a plot moving forward for 50,000 words. I’m currently at a little over 20,000 and I’ve decided I’m going to need to break my novel into mini novels to keep things interesting. I’ve also realized that after this month I’m going to need to do a LOT of editing to make my novel readable.
However, the point of this month is to write a 50,000-word novel from start to finish not make it perfect. I am really enjoying the challenge of writing daily and continuing to move forward with my story. I have, like many writers, struggled with finishing a story in the past and I’m making it my number one goal at the moment to finish NaNoWriMo even if it kills me. On the bright side, I have been using 4thewords which is a site that uses gamification to make writing more fun with in-game challenges and rewards as added incentives to keep going. 4thewords also has an amazing forum with a dedicated community of writers providing all sorts of writing advice, tips, and tricks.
I’ve also found that listening to music that puts me in a similar mood to what my characters are currently going through does help get into the spirit of the story. Lately, that’s been a lot of indie music with the occasional party music interlude.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, let me know how it’s going for you.
Happy Writing!
Mulan
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