Writing Wednesdays: Returning to NaNoWriMo

Well - it's Wednesday 1st November, and what better thing to talk about in this week's Writing Wednesdays post than NaNoWriMo?!

Back in November 2011, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. I wrote most of the first draft of my second published novel, Rolling Dice, in that month. I signed up again the next summer for Camp NaNoWriMo, but my mental health got in the way of my writing that summer, and I decided to drop out of it a few days in.

Now a quick explanation for those of you who don't know -

NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month) takes place every year in November. The aim is to write 50,000 words in the month. You track your progress online (there's a super handy graph, and it even tells you how many words a day you have to do to stay on track).

I wrote more about NaNoWriMo (what it is and why exactly you should do it) in this post.



I haven't done NaNo properly since that first time in 2011, and I loved it that year. It was so rewarding.

I chose not to do it while I was at university - I had other writing projects (for publishing) that I was juggling on top of studies. And last year, after I'd finally graduated, I was... doing more exams and had exactly no life for about three months straight. (You can read more about why I quit that job here.)

But this year - a whole six years on - I've decided to have a crack at NaNo once more. I've signed up - and you can view my page and buddy up with me here if you like - and I'm raring to go.

The job I'm in at the minute is waaaay more forgiving than my old job, in terms of time. (I'm actually home from work in time to watch Pointless, and those of you in the UK will understand how awesome that is.) My mental health is better than it was this time last year now I don't have the pressure of my old job.

And more than that: I have a project I'm really excited about. It's one I started a while back and chewed over the first few thousand words several times over because I couldn't get it to work. I worked on it more in the last few weeks and it's finally starting to work out. I'm excited about the story and the characters... but I've been having some trouble with motivation.

It's weird, right? That even though it's a project I'm excited about, I'm struggling to actually sit down and work on it.

(This is also where I admit I've been writing fanfiction more than anything else in the last year. Oops?)

But to deal with the motivation problem, I've signed up for NaNo. I figured, why not? I might as well. It'll give me that extra push to really focus on it - and even though I've got about 9,000 words already in the bank, I'd be happy to get any progress. Ecstatic if I can hit 50,000 words - or even 60,000 and do the whole 50k new words goal in the month.

Are you going to be doing NaNoWrio? Do you have any top tips you'd like to share? Let me know in the comments below, or Tweet me @Reekles!