Saturday, November 17, 2018

NaNoWriMo Mid-Month Update!

Hello all! Today I'm not talking about reading, but instead I'll be discussing writing! Writing has been a passion of mine as long as reading has been. In fact, I remember writing Taylor Lautner fanfiction in 5th grade math class more than I remember the actual class. Writing has been a passion for mine for so long, and even when I fell out of touch with reading for a few years, I continued to write and write and write.

This is my third time participating in NaNoWriMo. I've won the previous times I've done it, but we'll see if I can swing that this year. But wait, what is NaNoWriMo? It stands for National Novel Writing Month and it's a challenge during the month of November to write 50,000 words. It's quite the feat and one that I am tackling this year.

I came into this NaNo already having written this story and plotted out some of it. The only thing I'm going to say about my novel is that it's a young adult (so far) fantasy about dragons. I started writing it years ago, yet I revamped it at the beginning of Freshman year of college and then again at the beginning of this past summer. I've been steadily working since then, but before this month, I hadn't added much to the story yet. For NaNo this year, I decided not to use the 13,000+ words I'd already written and instead try to add 50k. It's not working out too well.

So far, in the month of November, I've written about 14,000 words, which is about what I had written from the beginning of summer until now. That's still a good amount of words, but the target goal for today is over 28,000. That means I'm only about halfway to the target for today and many, many words behind if I'm going to write 50k by the end of November.

But I'm not stressing. If I don't finish, then I don't finish. November is a busy month for this college student. November sees an influx in papers, assigned readings, exams, and art projects that take up so much of my time. Did I mention I also run this blog, a bookstagram account, and am trying to hit my Goodreads reading goal? 

I think for me, November is just a terrible month to do this in. December isn't the most ideal, but at least I'd have winter break to sit around and write. It's quite the feat to write a novel at any point of the year, but this month is especially stressful.

So I'm not letting it stress me. I'm not worried about reaching the required word count because, at the end of the day, I'm writing and that's all that matters. I'm adding to my novel and I'm doing something I enjoy. On days where I don't feel like writing, I'm not going to force myself or I'll end up hating this novel. But, eventually, I will finish. And it will be a glorious achievement. 

To all my fellow NaNoWriMo-ers, good luck! I hope you're enjoying the challenge and not stressing yourself out too much. I know you have it in you to write as much as you can this month, whether that be 50k or 10k. 



Thanks for reading!
xoxo
Lauren



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2 comments:

  1. Good luck! Is the novel going to end with dragon killing hero by biting his neck with poisoned fangs? Seem to remember that's been tried before.

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    1. Nope, the ending is completely different from that! This isn't that kind of dragon book :)

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