The Success of NaNoWriMo
How I turned 50,000 words into a contest-winning book
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place in November every year. Back in 2013, when I started writing for publication, I’d just finished writing my first book in the spring of that year, and was looking for a new project to tackle. So I decided to give it a go.
The goal is to write 50,000 words or more in one month. While this isn’t a full book in most genres, it is at least half a book, sometimes more. And when I was successful in my first year of NaNoWriMo by producing 50k words, it meant my alternate history novel was on its way to completion.
But, as any author knows, publishing is a sloooow business. The first book I wrote wasn’t published until 2018 (5 years from writing to print), and my first NaNoWriMo success didn’t reach a completed draft until this year (2021), and will be published at the end of 2022 (9 years from start to finish).
But I never would have started the book, let alone completed it, without NaNoWriMo — it gave me the push and the drive to get the words on the page. And the Pitch Week contest I entered for my book manuscript (and ended up winning, to get a publishing contract!) gave me the drive to finish and edit the manuscript.
