NaNoWriMo

 I retired from teaching in June 2021. Retiring in the midst of a pandemic is a different experience than what I had expected. However, one of the goals I had for retirement was to participate in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. 

I'm sure many of you already know about this challenge, but in brief, the goal is to write a 50,000 word DRAFT of a novel in the month of November. The website, https://nanowrimo.org/, has helpful information, encouragement, and a daily word counter. It's a friendly, supportive online community.

I have written all kinds of things - articles, poems, short stories -- but never anything as huge as a novel. I had an idea, though, that I liked a lot. The NaNoWriMo website had lots of helpful things for planning, developing characters, plotting, etc. I used some of them.

Then November 1 came and I started actually writing. At first things went fairly smoothly. The NaNoWriMo folks stress that this is a DRAFT you're writing, editing will come later, the goal now is to get words down on virtual paper. Don't reread at this point.

It's very hard to stop the internal critic. It's hard to write 1,667 words each day. I stopped. My total for the month was 8,022. I don't consider this a failure. I learned a lot, about various aspects of writing. My novel idea was a time-travel historical fiction about musicians. I realized I needed to do a LOT of research about what life was like in the late 1700s in Europe, and more about the people I wanted to include in the story. I also realized I needed more plot! And more conflict and more development of my characters! 

So, I have been reading historical fiction I am working on strengthening my writing habit. And here I in #SOL22! Best wishes to everyone! I look forward to reading many SOL posts.