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I’m prepping for NaNoWriMo for the first time this year.
If you’re not familiar with that, I don’t blame you; I didn’t know much about the event, either. I’ve heard the word before, and a few of my friends participated successfully, but I have never tried it.
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and started decades ago with a few people in San Francisco. This year, hundreds of thousands of people will set a goal to write 50,000 words for a new project every November.
Since the minimum number of words for something to qualify as a novel is 40,000, if I’m able to “win” NaNoWriMo and write 50,000 words by the end of the month, I’ll be the proud mama of a novel.
I’ve been debating trying my hand at the mystery genre.
I have ideas for a novel floating around in my head: some characters, the setting, and some events are mapped out in my mind.
I figured 50,000 words in 30 days wouldn’t be that big a deal—and then I worked out the math.
50,000 words divided by 30 days is 1,667 words per day. I don’t think I’ll be able to write every day, but aiming for 2,000 words per day should give me a cushion.
Then I thought, “How long does writing 2,000 words take?”
That didn’t sound excessive until I tried to write 2,000 words.
Getting 2,000 words on paper (or in a document) takes about an hour when I’m just writing to write, like a stream of consciousness/free writing-type thing. Because I’m confident in my subject, but I don’t care what the final product is.
It takes about twice that when I’m writing a blog post, though, because I need to consider what I’m writing and make sure my ideas are cohesive and coherent. And even after taking two hours to write, I still have to edit heavily later.
If my topic needs to be researched, or needs quotes and excerpts from other articles, then getting the post down takes even longer!
So, to “win” at NaNoWriMo, I need to devote two hours per day to writing my novel.
But I think I’ve found a cheat!
I have Google docs on my phone, so I tried opening up a new document and taking my phone with me as I went for a walk. I used the talk to text feature to “talk out” my story instead of writing with a keyboard.
Yea, I know, I’m supposed to start a brand-new novel for the first of November,
so that’s what I’m working on now.
And it only took 41 minutes to get 2000 words of that outline—well actually 1800 but whatever—into a document by talking into my phone on my walk! Even if the outline needs to be edited to within an inch of its life later, at least I can get some words down on paper; I can just multitask while I’m exercising!
I help authors, researchers, business people, students, and web marketers to polish their writing before they send it out into the world.
Fourth and last (for now!) in our series of book reviews featuring Kindle Unlimited books that explain ways to outline a novel. Let’s get ready for NaNoWriMo!
Third in our series of book reviews featuring Kindle Unlimited books that explain ways to outline a novel. Let’s get ready for NaNoWriMo!
Second in our series of book reviews featuring Kindle Unlimited books that explain ways to outline a novel. Let’s get ready for NaNoWriMo!
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