Doing Nation Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Differently

For years, writers all over the world stood, or rather wrote, in solidarity with each other as we pursued penciling, penning, typing, or dictating 50,000 words in 30 days during the month of November. The mad dash started on November 1^st, and we were crawling across the finish line with bloodied fingers or hoarse throats on the 30^th day of November. Nevertheless, those of us who do this insane activity yearly participate because our brains have grown weary holding back the words that just want to get written and shared. Every day, we pursued that lofty count of 1,667 words. Some days we made it or exceeded the goal. Other days, we fell short, but we didn’t give up. Why? We figured anything written was more than what we had on October 31^st. Then, we spent the next eleven months editing that work just to have the mad dash start all over again.

However, last year, our beloved NaNoWriMo site retired, leaving us to figure out what to do next. Where would we log our counts? Regardless of what each individual chose to do, we made the commitment to continue the tradition of locking ourselves away for hours with snacks, soft tunes (or not), and our vast imagination. That, my friends, is how we do NaNo. We encourage each other, smile at our successes, and relish in the competition to spur each other on so we all win this battle against discouragement, weariness, or hopelessness. This event helps develop the practice of writing every day. I’m amazed how much I’ve learned about myself during the month of November. My least favorite part is slogging through the story around the middle of November. But I write on.