Meanwhile, NaNoWriMo Writers Everywhere Valiantly Type Towards November 30
After what might be the most unusual Thanksgiving in the United States, which followed the most unusual Election year, during the most unusual international health crisis, three days remain in National Novel Writing Month where our valiant heroines and heroes of the keyboard are ever-tap-typing and inking towards that 50K word goal.
On this day in 2013, I announced to the then-500 followers of this humble Medium publication that I’d crossed the 50K finish line. Today I’m at 40K, and there are 15,025 of you! 🎉
Maybe I’ll make 50K, but my real, rebellious goal this month was to produce the raw material for four new chapters. I wanted to inch closer to completing the first draft of the novel I started during NaNo 2013, and began rewriting in 2018.
Wherever you are in your process, I bet you have more words than you did on November 1. I hope you take a moment to see what you’ve accomplished. You’ve taken a dream of writing a novel someday and begun that journey.
One of my favorite aspects of NaNo is that it table-flips the image of writers toiling in solitude, and creates a global community where we cheer each other on to completing a common goal. NaNo Board President and former Municipal Liaison, Lise Quintana , shares about encouragement in her post Strap on Your Pom-Poms for NaNoWriMo.
How many of us have started this NaNo goal, only to get stumped and stop? My hand’s raised, how about you? sue mcgarry shows how she’s overcome this challenge, in How to Stop Writing And Start Again.
In NaNoWriMo Thanksgivingness, NaNo Board Member Stephanie Block pens words that ring true: “I’m thankful for being a writer and for how it feels to write, like rightness and home and a glorious way to flail around in my weirdness.”
There’s no fixed way to do NaNoWriMo. There are planners, pantsters, plantsters and rebels. Jennifer Ng’s process is uniquely her own, but I found most lines resonated in her post, How to NaNoWriMo.
This month we’ve also heard from Chad Schimke, Goivanna Irelund, and T. Mark Mangum, and hope to hear from you, in November and beyond. For December we invite you to write about your editing process — how do you take your rough draft and create your next draft?
Open this email in a browser and leave a private note on the post that you’d like to be added to the publication.
We’re cheering for you!
If you have a bit to spare, will you join me in donating to National Novel Writing Month, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that brings this event to life?
With gratitude,
Julie Russell
NaNoWriMo Board Member since 2015 & Participant since 2012
