Nanowrimo 2016

Yes that time of year is upon us again, it's Nanowrimo time!

I've posted about doing Nanowrimo before. I've done it and won in the previous 2 years. I have no idea how I managed it last year whilst also writing an essay for my masters and having a very stressful job but I loved what I was writing and it totally spurred me on! (I just logged on the the Nanowrimo website and apparently I skipped last year it was the year before that I last wrote-how did I miss a year?!)

Basically Nanowrimo challenges writers to write a first draft of 50K words in 30 days. What's great about it is that it is just pure writing and there are loads of incentives to spur you on and lots of things to get involved in online and IRL! I love that fact that there are twitter sprints and I get to update my word count online and there are even online forums for ideas for if you ever get stuck.

The great thing about the word sprints on twitter is that there is always one going on, you just need to follow the Nanowrimo word sprints account and you'll be challenged to see how much to can write in 10 mins, 15 mins, sometimes an hour and there's always a prompt of some kind too so if you are having a really hard writing day you can take the prompt of 'have your character find something scary' or 'introduce a tropical creature into your plot' and then you'll have some words for that particular word sprint (they might not be great words) but you'll have written something!

Another great thing about Nanowrimo is that you don't actually have to write many words in a day to meet the daily goal and then therefore meet your 50k goal at the end of November, its a little over 1600 words a day and you'll be there, easy peasy! I love the 50k words because its just a case of sitting down and writing, you don't have to be perfect but getting those 50 k words out there feels so satisfying.

Now, if last year wasn't challenge enough for me, this year is going to be even trickier because I don't actually have 30 days to get this all done. I am getting married in Las Vegas on 26th November. Both our parents are flying into Denver on 21st November and then we have wedding stuff from then until they leave on 29th November. So I really only have 20 days to write this first draft, 21 if you count the 30th November, but who am I kidding? That is going to be spent recovering from a wedding in Las Vegas not frantically adding to my plotline!

So I'm really looking forward to having a little longer to write in terms of hours in the day this year because I haven't got any teaching commitments right now,  but I'm a little nervous because I'm also going to be planning a big Thanksgiving and a wedding too. But I'm excited to see what community events happen in Denver during Nanowrimo because this will be a change of scene for me.

I also know exactly what I'm going to write about and no I'm not going to tell you!

If you're doing Nanowrimo too then let me know and maybe we can do some super-fun word races on twitter!