Experiment: Livestreaming NaNoWriMo

This year, for National Novel Writing Month, I’m going to be conducting an experiment in accountability. That’s what NaNoWriMo is for me — I’ve written nine novels already, so “finish a book” isn’t as big a goal as it used to be. No, what I need is something to get my butt in that seat on an everyday basis despite all of my other responsibilities and distractions.

A 50k word deadline in 30 days is a good start, but this year I’m taking it a step further by livestreaming my daily wordcount.

That’s right.

Every day for the month of November I’ll be logging on to Twitch to write, publicly, the rough draft for the third novel in the Shadow Decade series, Open Proxy. No blinds, no filters, just raw unadulterated text.

And oh man, when I say rough draft, I mean that this draft is gonna be rough. You may have heard that “writing is rewriting.” It’s very true in my case. My work doesn’t even approach presentable until its third or fourth iteration.

So why am I showing strangers on the internet the ugly side of my prose?

Accountability. I’m doing it every day, and you can come with and laugh at me. Maybe it’ll assure you that rough draft material doesn’t need to be golden words from the lips of god, but rather a rough slash of the word-knife across unblemished page.

Maybe you’ll get a glimpse into what it’s like turning an outline into prose, and just how much I actually deviate over the course of a typical project.

Maybe you’ll see my work and want to hire me as a consultant or developmental editor to help whip your own story into shape.

I don’t know, man, I just work here. You can come along, see how it works, ask questions, but hey, spoilers will abound. If you haven’t read the first two Shadow Decade novels, Cold Reboot and Network Protocol, you might feel a bit lost, so consider picking those up first… I’ll be busy trying to make my daily wordcount, and won’t want to spend time answering questions about the earlier books.

So check me out, 8pm CST, on Twitch.