National Novel Writing Month: Arguably The Craziest Thing I Do

Every November I participate in the global creative challenge known as National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is simple: fifty thousand words on a new novel projects, written entirely between the first and thirtieth of November. One thousand six hundred and sixty seven words each day. Yes, including Thanksgiving. And my birthday, for that matter.

Good, bad, or ugly, it’s a fucking frenzy. And without for a moment advocating that anyone else join that frenzy, I fucking love it.

My first NaNoWriMo was November of 2008. My life in St. Louis had just failed. I had moved in with my grandfather in Kansas City. I was looking for work at a time of year when my industry is Not Fucking Hiring. And I filled the rest of my copious free time with writing a trashy fantasy novel that owed as much to Ranma 1/2 as it did to The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons. I crossed the 50k finish line with days to spare.

I don’t remember what I wrote the next year, or even if I won or lost – a site error ate most of my early projects – but that was where and when I met my partner of (now) twelve years. 

NaNoWriMo has been a bonding experience for us nearly every year since. I also got my best friend hooked a couple years ago, which just makes the whole thing even better. 

I would, of course, like to say that I’ve won more years than I’ve lost but … I can’t say, for sure. College was a huge interruption to my life, I have not always been meticulous about my record keeping, and (as I mentioned above) a site error a few years ago ate most of my projects. I was able to reconstruct some of them, but I just don’t know.

I declined to play in 2018, hoping that taking such a large project off my plate would help me manage my mental health, which was … not good, in the wake of (among other things) being chased out of public leadership in my local Pagan community. I found, however, that skipping NaNoWriMo just gave me more time to stew, and it would be charitable to call me an absolute fucking disaster.

I’ve won the last two years – Initiate-level supporters guys fan find The Black Book and The Makovika Cylce in the archives. Hopefully it goes without saying that I plan to win this year.

Fifty thousand words is not a long novel. The Mark of the Wolf is twice that length. It’s nothing on the doorstoppers that people seem to take for granted these days. 

But thirty days is not a long time. Frankly, the older I get, the shorter a month seems. What the literal fuck happened to August?

One thousand six hundred sixty seven words is a short story. Not that many words on their own. But it’s a lot to write in a single day. I’m usually happy with half that. A thousand or eleven hundred is usually a good day. 

So, every November, I commit to writing double my usual daily wordcount every day for thirty days. On a fresh draft, if not always an entirely new project. Which is absolutely batshit crazy insane. And I have done so almost every year for the past twelve years.

Obviously, one doesn’t make such a commitment without some sort of plan. Most WriMos (as we have become collectively known) have a strategy of some kind. For myself, I usually spend the better part of October outlining, writing descriptions and maybe doing sketches of characters and locations. I roll into November with a thousand or two words of notes, a few lines of dialogue, and a pretty concrete vision for how things are going to begin, middle, and end.

One thousand six hundred sixty seven words. Write that much every day – regular, clockwork – and you jog over the finish line before midnight November 30 with a minimal stress and a clear conscience. On a really good day, I can do it in less than an hour. More often, it takes up to two. Some days it just doesn’t happen. So the game becomes balancing a half-dozen three- or five thousand word days with twice that many days where you got maybe four or five hundred instead of the requisite 1667. I get early wordcount boosts by going full Robert Jordan on the scenery. I fluff the end of each chapter with a bit of commentary for you, my Patreon supporters. On my first bad day, I count my outline. At some point, I’ll boost my wordcount with an over the top sex scene (the first sex scene in The Black Book was 3000 words).

Have I always done it that way? Of course not. There was some trial and error. I wrote my first NaNo 100% by the seat of my pants; my first Camp NaNo was literally inspired by a dream. Nor does the strategy guarantee success. But it’s the process I’ve developed over the last decade, and it’s produced not only a fair number of victories but a few really solid drafts that will one day be released as finished novels.

National Novel Writing Month is a wild, maddening, creative frenzy. I would be lying if I said that I enjoy every minute of it. But the taste of victory …. ah. So sweet. And, honestly, as long as I make at least 10,000 words, I still feel pretty good about myself.

My official NaNoWriMo.org wordcount, which includes every wordcount since 2008, is 363,826 words. This is probably an undercount, given my lost projects. By the end of November, that number will almost certainly but upward of 400k.

I hope that, this year you’ll join me for the ride – either as an Initiate level Patreon supporter, enjoying each chapter of my soon-to-be-announced project as I finish it, or as a fellow WriMo, or both. If you choose to join National Novel Writing Month, yourself, please add me as a friend on the official website.