NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month

Here are some links to explain what this month is all about. Salon, Wikipedia

If you are doing NaNoWriMo, I’m happy for you. If you can get 15,000 to 12,000 words out in one month that is solid progress. I’ve been working on a new manuscript since late October. It is that sci-fi worker’s comp investigation one set in the universe of Thuringer: The Officer. I have 31,000  words and I’m almost at the 150 page mark.

I’m glad you are writing this month. However, I want to know why? Fame? Money? The Glory of Book Signings and Readings? Let me tell you something about that. This isn’t something you do for money. I have a friend who is a full time writer in the genre of romance. She makes 60K a year. Before that she was in the world of theatre as a professional costumer. She had a hard road of eight books before she ever got noticed by an agent. Was NaNoWriMo involved? No. Not to my knowledge at least.

Have I ever done NaNoWriMo? No. Why? The answer is rather plain, I’ve always been writing. Writing comes as a compulsion to me. I’m not happy until I’ve written two thousand words a day on a project. If I don’t write, I get mean and moody. I wrote my first unpublished manuscript in high school. Before that I wrote little stories I gave to my teachers. I’ve always been writing. I love writing. Am I saying NaNoWriMo is bad? Absolutely not.

NaNoWriMo is your starting point. Make NaNoWriMo the NaNoWriYear or the NaNoWriLife. If you are serious about this you aren’t going to attach it to a fad or a month like it is some wine club or a distinctive period to write in. Rather than that make it the springboard to a life of words and letters. Find how you need to write and just start writing. Then Blog, then promote, and then have signings, and this author thing will begin for you.

I’ll discuss the author thing in a future post.