This post, by Carolyn Jewel, originally appeared on Girlfriends Book Club.
Every year for the last several years, I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and failed.
In case you don’t know, NaNoWriMo occurs during the month of November and participants all have the single goal of writing 50,000 words. That’s about 1,600 words a day.
My friend Rachel Herron (Check out her website at YarnAGoGo.com) sold her NaNoWriMo novel, by the way. She’s a wonderful writer. So am I, I swear! but I remain a NaNoWriMoFa.
I even failed the two years I was invigorated, inspired, and pumped up by attending talks by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty. He spoke at my Uni when I was in grad school, and a few years later, at my RWA chapter. He’s an inspiring speaker, so if you ever get the chance to hear him, GO!
I have copious excuses, of course. Some of them are lame and some of them are really good. When I was in grad school, my son was quite young, I was working full time, and I was under contract for more books. I was quite busy and I had my schedule worked out to the point where every moment was spoken for. There was no wiggle room for adding stuff.
A couple of years I was writing a book anyway, but when November hit, both times I was in the Deleting Crap Phase and I ended up with negative word count. And a way better book by the end of December when I was in the Writing Way Better Stuff phase.
Read the rest of the post on Girlfriends Book Club.