November is National Novel Writing Month! To celebrate and encourage you to join me in the race to 50,000 words the DreamAnvil will be posting on Sunday for the next four weeks! Get out there and write those novels!
With the coming week, many of you may be wondering why I tricked you into doing this thing! WriMo is a challenge, it’s not a walk in the park by any estimation, but it is not insurmountable. I would never tell my readers to do something that was just not possible. If you want to succeed in November then there is only one path to victory. You have to write.
There is no secret to this. WriMo has set the guidelines, 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s 12,500ish words a week, and 1667 words a day. They even give writers who sign up on their website a handy little tracking tool. Remember, when we are faced with huge goals we need to break them down into smaller ones that we can accomplish. WriMo’s daily writing totals are a prime example of this. Fifty thousand words might seem like an impossible amount when you first hear about it. By breaking it down we are still left with about two pages of writing to get done. That’s still a large amount of writing to get done but this too can be overcome with a little planning.
Bit by bit and the task is done. Every day, you have a target to hit, 1667 words. You can tackle this number in any manner you like. Maybe you pound a few words out at breakfast or squirrel away a few more words while on your break at work. Or perhaps you need to break out a large amount of time each night. There are multiples roads to the finish line, every little bit counts. I will usually set aside at least a solid hour per day during WriMo to write. I cannot type fast enough to shape 1667 words into something that makes sense in an hour. This hour is my minimum threshold before I hop on the exercise bike or watch a bit of TV. Usually, I will blow past this timeframe if I am in a good groove, but not every writing session this month is going to be easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. There will be hard days, days where you just can’t squeeze something out. That is ok. Take a break. Do something else.
That said writers need to write. It is our craft. If you want to get to 50,000 words you need to focus. I do not watch a lot of TV during WriMo, nor do I play a ton of games. Why? Because these take away from the time I need to spend writing. I have a full-time job and I have social connections I need to tend to. I need to sacrifice something to make room for my writing space and that is my TV time. I will even reserve time away from home, staying late at work, or in a coffee shop, just to keep my eyeballs off of the TV and my mind focused on the task at hand.
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” – James Baldwin.
If you want to see this thing through there is really only one path to victory. Write. Every day, write. Every chance you can, write. You don’t have time for idly fancies or thinking about the perfect way to describe a ripe apple. You are racing against the clock, your only choice is to march forward relentlessly. There is no time to go back and do it over. No time to research some inane theory. The only way out is forward. If you get in a bind, plunk a note down and keep moving. Time is your enemy. Diligence and endurance will be how you overcome her.