November is nearly over and so is NaNoWriMo. In case you’ve never heard of that, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and is when you sign up to write 50,000 words in 30 days! This is technically the definition of a novel but of course, most modern novels are much larger, so most writers use November as a chance to get a good start on their next book.
My rough draft is just that—very rough! I can tell I’m not writing up to my full potential for some reason, but I can’t stop and try to correct things or I won’t make that 50,000 word goal. So I’m just plugging away at it, slapping down the bare bones of the story and planning to go back and fix everything in December. Or once I finish the whole novel, whichever appeals to me better come December.
Of course, I also have other writing to do in November: a guest spot on the Western Fictioneers blog plus two of my own blogs that I try to update every week. And I post writing prompts on my Twitter and Patreon platforms, plus the articles and images I share on my Facebook page. That’s a lot of extra words.
My distraction is usually Alexa Answers. This is a website where you can find, if you have an Amazon account, questions people have asked their Alexa device that the device did not know the answer to. You can provide an answer—serious attempts only, please, not smartarse replies!—and earn badges and reputation points and even a chance at an Amazon gift card once a month. Plus, it’s fun seeing your name on the leaderboard and trying to get as high as you can before the end of the month, when it resets. When I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing (aka writing on the novel), that’s usually what I’m up to. I need to taper off!
As for the novel, I’m roughly on Chapter 10, headed for 11, so I’m doing fairly well considering. I’m pretty sure I’ll hit the 50,000 word goal by tomorrow night, barring some sort of crazy circumstance. Am I finished with the novel? Hell, no, not even close. But have I gotten more words down than I would have done otherwise? Yes, indeed, and that’s why I sign up for NaNoWriMo every November. They also do a “Camp NaNoWriMo” in the Summer and Fall, and sometimes I sign up for those as well. We’ll see how I feel come Summer, 2024.