As we hurtle through October towards November, writers’ thoughts turn to NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. The NaNoWriMo challenge is to complete the first draft of a novel (a minimum of 50,000 words) in just thirty days, and fans of the annual event maintain it is perfect for bashing out early drafts, pushing through writer’s block, and simply getting words down on the page. There’s no doubt that the global community which has built up around NaNoWriMo is a great way to reach out to other writers and find some moral support in what can be a very lonely activity.
NaNoWriMo isn’t for me. I’ve never attempted it, and I never will: I’m just not that way inclined. A compulsive self-editor, I find it impossible to move onto chapter two until chapter one is free from typos, scans beautifully and makes at least a vague attempt to move the story forward in the right direction. A daily word count can be a great motivator for some, but it has the opposite effect on me – freezing me to the keyboard until I’m incapable of writing even one word.
November, for me, will be spent knocking the latest draft of my book into some sort of order, with the ever-patient support of my editor, who continues to reassure me that this amount of work is perfectly normal in the run up to publication. And there was I thinking the hard work was already done…
If writing a novel in a month isn’t for you, but you still fancy something to focus the mind, pick up a copy of November’s Writing Magazine, which is in the shops (or online) now. My article, ‘ten inspiring ideas to try instead of NaNoWriMo’ is on page twelve, and features suggestions from bestselling authors Veronica Henry, Julie Cohen, Ben Hatch, C L Taylor and Dan Waddell, as well as my own pearls of wisdom.
