Thank the Lord that is finished! And I’ll do it again next year. But it certainly takes it out of you …

Yes, I’m talking about NaNoWriMo – the National Novel Writing Month. The name is deceptive: no longer national, it occurs worldwide, where authors sign up with the intention of encouraging each other to reach the goal of writing 50,000 words in the month of November. The idea is no editing, just get your first draft done.

And I did it: 50,170 to be precise. Officially. But,  all good intentions aside, some of us are just not quite comfortable with the ‘no editing’ thing. So I actually wrote a hell of a lot more than that. And, given the nature of my novel New Life Across the Oceans, I still have a hell of a lot to go. But at least I have something that resembles a novel: something I can work with.

Once I hit my word count, however, I didn’t write for days. I was exhausted and just needed a break from the computer. My biggest challenge now will be to not leave it there but to keep working on it. Today is Saturday in my world: the novel will be resumed on Monday! Yes, it will!

Would I recommend doing NaNoWriMo? Absolutely. And hopefully by next November, I will have another project ready for a major burst of words. While I still have work to do on New Life Across the Oceans, I don’t think that there is another 50,000 in it. So I will definitely need something else by then. I’m sure I’ll manage. A year to think about it.

Cheers

Kerry

Categories: NaNoWriMo National Novel Writing Month

Tagged as: authors New Life Across the Oceans novel stories writing

Kerry A Waight - Author

A writer of historical fiction and paranormal stories.