November is National Novel Writing Month

Some of you may be familiar with NaNoWriMo (it's a dreadful mouthful. I know). It's a mad dash sprint to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month. To 'win' at it, you've basically got to sustain a 1677 word per day pace for the entire month.

That's...a lot.

I want to let you all know: I'm participating in it this year, and I'm using the momentum to help write the sequel to Sword of Sorrow. If you want to track my progress or need a writing buddy, look me up as Woofersaurus.

Truth is, I love doing it whenever I can. Yes, it's crazy and requires some discipline, and often those words aren't exactly poetry, but it gets words out on the page—and that's a big win. I've heard a lot of people say they want to write a book, but when pressed, they just don't start.

"WRITE A DAMN PARAGRAPH," I'll often tell these people. "JUST START. SAY SOMETHING. ANYTHING."

NANO just forces you to write. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, it's just writing (All the editing comes later).

And that's a big win for everyone.

Some encouragement for if you're thinking about writing a novel

I'll tell you this. This is technically my 7th NANO attempt. I've 'won' three times. It took me 150,000 + words before I was even ready to write Sword of Sorrow. A while back there was a survey about the number of books authors wrote before they published their debut novel. 83.8% of respondents said that they had written at least one novel before writing their debut. The average was 3.24 books before debuting.

Those are big numbers, but the point I'm trying to make is this: just start. Sure, it may not be the book you want to be known for and people will never read it (I sure as hell hope no one reads the first novel I ever wrote), but the experience helps.

You just have to start.