To 50K and BEYOND!

If you follow me on social media, you know that I have committed to undertaking the National Novel Writing Month challenge of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. That was not a typo... fifty THOUSAND words in thirty DAYS.

I've done this before and it was painful and frustrating and exactly what I needed to kickstart myself into writing the trilogy I had been researching for literally months.

#WIPjoy Day 1 - Visual of your Work in Progress

So here we are again and I have spent a lot of time talking about, researching, plotting, and agonizing over my current book.  Its a work in progress (WIP)  in that I have been working on it...just not writing it. That is something I hope to remedy with #NaNoWriMo this year.

I did an entire month of #WIPjoy which I love because it makes you think about and explain aspects of your characters and novel you may not have delved into otherwise. I find the quarterly Twitter event quite helpful and encourage you to take part in the winter. Its great fun and you meet a lot of other authors which is always a good thing.

I'm working on a scifi mystery. It takes place in the near future where Elara Savoya, a tech hunter is dragged into a high stakes international plot that will put the space race and ultimately man's place among the stars in jeopardy. So yes...I'm raring to go on this one.

One of the intimidating things about #NaNoWriMo is that it takes place during the holiday season. For those who take part in NaNoWriMo and who also live in the United States, that means Thanksgiving. A huge family dinner with tons of prep and cleanup and time spent socializing. Great for the soul...not so great for the word count.

As a fix, Christen E Krumm has proposed a BACKWARDS NaNoWriMo. This involves frontloading your wordcount per day so that as you start to inch towards the holidays, your required words per day to stay on target goes down.  

This method has you go gangbusters while you're still all excited and hyped up on Halloween candy and gives you a break as you head towards Christmas decorating, shopping, partying, etc.  Here's a helpful writing plan from Christen's site.

Backwards NaNoWriMo Plan

I think I'm going to give this a try. Anything to get my first draft done before the new year. I'm hoping to hit a few conferences and I'd love to have a working draft to pitch or talk to editors about. 

What about you? 

Are you thinking of doing #NaNoWriMo this year?  If so...add me on your buddy list (Raquel Byrnes) and I'll do the same. Just leave your user name in the comments.  Happy writing!