All about NaNoWriMo

I hope you are keeping well and trying to stay sane with this unusual election season. To get a little respite from the troubles and changes around us, today I want to talk about NaNoWriMo.

What is NaNoWriMo you may ask? Well, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It occurs every year in November, and the aim is to complete a 50,000-word manuscript by November 3oth. The daily target is 1667 words, for 3o days to meet that target. I believe it's a great way to actually get started on a novel. I mean you have other people doing the challenge with you, so together you can stay motivated and give each other tips. It provides a great sense of community that can feel a little lost when working on a project alone.

You may be saying "But I don't have an idea". NaNoWriMo is especially good for pansters i.e those who have a vague idea of what they want to write and are basically writing by the seat of their pants. The daily target word count gives you the motivation to get down words on the page. It doesn't have to be perfect, at the end of the day (or month) it's just a first draft. Someone asked a writer whether quality or quantity was the most important thing when it came to writing. The writer said, "definitely quantity". The more you have the more you know what to add or to take away from. Perhaps that's why the slogan "write first then edit" is so popular but everyone to his own.

Now that you know what it's all about you may want to get started. Here's the link to the official website that offers tons of resources and access to other writers who are taking this novel-writing journey. https://nanowrimo.org/

Here's the link to another website called 'Write the World"; https://writetheworld.com/competitions/135

During NaNowrimo, they have a competition where you can work on an extract of your novel. That was my first Write the World competition and the opportunity to read other people's work and to get feedback and reviews on my own work was just so valuable. They also have monetary prizes.

Now that you're all set up all you need is to set aside a time of the day when you find it best to write (or when you don't have online work to do), find a comfy place, open a page and write.

You may be wondering if I'll be taking part this year since I did a whole spiel on it. Sadly, final year is so crazy right now, that I don't think I'll be able to take part formally but that doesn't stop me from making progress with the sequel of 'To Catch a Rebel', the title will be coming soon.

That's it from me. I hope you guys have a good time with your writing, studying, or keeping up with the election and I'll write to you soon.