Thursday, October 14, 2010

Who wants to write a book in a month?


Next month is National Novel Writing Month, or NANOWRIMO, and for the third year I’ll be a part of this global challenge. The challenge? Write fifty thousand words of a new project between November 1st and November 30th. The words all need to be written during that time. No rewriting of older work, no starting the project early. To achieve it you should write 1667 words per day, every day, in order to keep up. If you write more words in one day, that puts you ahead of the game, but the more you keep up with the writing, the more likely it is you’ll finish.

Mind you, this isn’t going to be a finished book. It will be a rough draft, something to edit into something that can be a sellable project. Acknowledging that this isn't a completed project gives the the option to play with ideas rather than committing yourself to making it letter perfect. That can come later during the editing phase.

My plan is to write a new Hollywood After Dark book, as that has been a pretty popular series. I’m thinking of doing a story about a vampire who decides to take a cruise, inviting along her long-time psi male companion and then finding out someone has hired a male shifter to be her bodyguard while on the trip. Maybe the guys get together and end up with her as well. Three in a bed is always such an interesting number. And then there is also the possibility of someone falling overboard, needing to be rescued, the three of them ending up on a deserted island...

So many interesting ideas to cover--and only thirty days to make them happen. I’ll have to let you know next month how it is going.

Cheers,
Janet Miller/Cricket Starr

8 comments:

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Dawn Marie Hamilron said...

Good luck with NANO!

Carol Ericson said...

I've never tried Nano because November is a busy month! I might just have to give a try this time since I have a book due in Feb. and I've heard Nano is fabulous motivation. Good luck!

Mona Risk said...

I can't do Nano. Too much for me, especially in November with the Thanksgiving holiday. But I love doing writing challenges. I started one on a loop three months ago and wrote a 90,000 words para, and had it crit and poliashed during that time. The idea was to write a minimum of 1000 words a day or at least 5000 words a week. It worked splendidly for the whole group. Good luck with your Nano.

Lee Lopez said...

I'm also doing Nano this year. I've done it before, but it's been a couple of years. Looking forward to it..
I'm doing the research for my historical that I'll start...It should be fun.

Jill James said...

I love Nano. I've done it 4 years now. I love the idea of seeing how fast and how far you can push yourself and your writing.

Marilu Mann said...

I'm debating about doing NANO again this year...only completed the challenge once in the last few years, but who knows...

Janet/Cricket said...

I love doing NaNo even though the month not only has Thanksgiving, but over Thanksgiving weekend my local ballet school does a Nutcracker that I've performed in 18 times over the past 20 years. So November is BUSY. But if I can do the word count then, I can do it at other times as well.

And it is so much fun with the little widgets you get off the NANO website. I get to enter my workcount and it tells me how much more I have to do, whether I'm on course or not, and how I'm doing compared to my buddies. Very inspiring. So if you are thinking of doing it, why not try? The worse thing that happens is that you end up with SOME word count by the end of the month and that's likely to be more than if you never did it at all.

Cheers,
Janet