NaNoWriMo 2011
It’s that time of year again. One of my favourite times of year, in fact: not Christmas, or my birthday, but NaNoWriMo time! Looking at my Nano profile, I can see that I’ve participated and passed the 50k mark five years out of five since 2006, hitting my highest ever word count last year with 70,135 words written during a mere 30 days, up from 65,283 in 2009. This year, I think I’m going to try for 75,000 words in November. Two and a half thousand words of creative writing every single day for 30 days, at the same time as trying to find a job, preparing for a community theatre audition and preparing for a concert at the beginning of December. I like a challenge.
I’m not sure what I’m going to write this year. I like trying to write original fiction for Nano; on the other hand, I’ve been avoiding writing the beginning section of an ongoing fan-fiction project because it’s not as exciting as the rest of it. Maybe I’ll go for 37,500 words of each.
The fan-fiction part is easy; I already know that world and those characters. I’ve got nothing in my head for original fiction at the moment; a doubly blank page! I might take a risky approach and write my original fiction based on what I can find in the Adoption Society forums. There’s always some good characters lurking about in there. Or maybe I’ll look back at the list I wrote last year; six ideas of how to construct a Nano Novel.
I’m going to try to blog regularly throughout November; having some sort of accountability tends to curb the tendency to procrastinate (usually over a really boring scene). Who else is taking on the challenge this year? What is your personal word count goal? Anyone going for 100k or more?
I always stick at 50.000 and then to finish the book in December, which usually gets me to 75-80k. I just want to be so careful about burning out and getting all my other stuff done during the month (even though it’s absolutely my favorite time of year too!)
I first went over the 50k mark by accident one year (ended up around 62K in 2008 if I remember correctly) and since then I figured that I should shoot higher the next year, and the next. I can’t see myself trying for more than 75k in a month though!