NaNoWriMo 2013

National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNo) is a fun challenge: write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. The goal is to write about 1,667 words a day to reach 50k by the 30th.

This is my third year attempting it -- the previous two didn't go so well;; However, I used those to figure out what I did wrong and how I could fix it. As of the 17th, I had 42,186 words! It's definitely going much better. A lot of that is because I went ahead and planned my novel (Aperture) throughout September and October. "Pantsing" is actually pretty hard! I always lost motivation. It helps that I have computer access this year, too.

NaNo is super fun, especially when you have writing buddies! My school has a NaNo Club so we meet on Mondays at lunch (aka today) and talk about writing, or even whatever else we want to. It can be pretty hard once the new excitement wears off, but I think the bragging rights of completion is cool. I've been working super hard this November because of a challenge Marissa Meyer proposed -- you can win prizes if you write more than her. It's also a lot easier to write more than needed when you're working towards a goal.

Word counts so far! It's so fun to watch it go up :) 

I'm definitely working more on Aperture than I would have without the pressure of reaching word count (and beating Marissa Meyer), which is nice! I made sure not to write any scenes of the story before the month started so I wouldn't run out of scenes, but at this point I'm running a little low on ideas. And that can actually be a good thing -- while the scenes I'm writing are pretty bad, I'm learning more about the characters and they're growing even more than they have during the planning stages.

I've also been asked if I'm going to publish them, as a book or online. I was originally going to update my work every day on tumblr, but I didn't have internet access the first weekend of the month, and there was also concern that the official word count would raise a flag if it found a copy of it on the internet. I probably won't publish it as a book. That's a lot of stress and extra work I'd rather not go through. I'll go back and fix it up, and then post it by chapters / scenes onto tumblr. It's something I'm doing for fun, so I don't want to "taint" that with the effort of trying to make money off of it.

Anyway, I'll try to remember to post about the outcome of NaNo in December!