How is it November already? With a new month comes a new post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Learn more about them on their website and Facebook page.
Our hosts this month are PJ Colando, Jean Davis, Lisa Buie Collard, and Diedre Knight.
Here's our question for November: November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?
For those who might not be familiar with NaNoWriMo, it's an annual challenge to write 50,000 words of a new work in thirty days. This requires an average of 1,667 words per day. I've participated twice, once in 2007 (when my son was still a baby; I figured it was a good way to kickstart my writing again), and in 2010. Although I hit my writing goal both times, I never finished either novel. For me, writing at that speed doesn't produce quality work. I suppose I could try to find those drafts and revise them, but I have so many other projects that it's unlikely to happen. I currently have three different stories in progress, though one is consuming much more mental space than the other two and therefore devours most of my writing time.
To those who are participating in NaNoWriMo, I wish you luck and offer you this tip: try writing on your phone. Save your work in cloud storage so you can access it anywhere on any device. I write in Word, so I have the Microsoft 365 app on my phone. Although writing on my phone does occasionally introduce extra spaces and odd characters into my work, I can fix those errors when I'm on my laptop. A phone is much more portable than a laptop or even a tablet.
Time to end this blog post and return to my story. If you're participating in NaNoWriMo, feel free to share a description of your work in the comments.
I just don't have the time in just about any month.
ReplyDeleteI did an alternative form of NaNo for two years where I wrote novellas. One novella I finished but didnt get through revising it, the other I didnt even finish. Neither of them have I returned to and probably won't knowing my attention span when it comes to writing long works. Still, I'm glad I tried it.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing you should mention about doing the work on a phone because I actually wrote the IWSG post on my phone in which I normally dont but I was was running so low on time I made that an exception!