NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month and once again, I'll be taking part in the writing challenge. I've done it for three years running and each year, I've completed 50,000 words in the thirty days of November.

The Office of Letters and Light in San Francisco came up with this challenge years ago, and every year, more writers take the challenge and complete a 50,000 word novel during the fall period. In April, the challenge is a 125 page film script during Script Frenzy.

This non profit organization sponsors educational materials for schools and does outreach to encourage children to write. If you know a teacher, be sure and recommend this to them. I can't think of a better way for young writers to gain confidence than information from this group.

NaNoWriMo is a win-win for me. It functions as a reason to keep writing, and a way to document my daily word count. It's a contest against myself, not other people. I guess it's like golf in that way. You only compete against yourself. It's the honor system.

I use NaNoWriMo to combat my 'inner editor'. This is the process which keeps me from getting to the end of a story by constantly perseverating over the prose, instead of getting on with the writing. NaNoWriMo turns off editing and encourages you to write, Write, WRITE!

In order to 'win' NaNoWriMo, you have a goal of 1,667 words a day though the month of November. Because I woke up sick on Sunday, I didn't write at all yesterday. So, today, feeling marginal, I decided to make up for it. I managed to make better than my two day total for word count. And I'm feeling pretty good about it.

--Sandee Wagner