Wednesday Blog Post: Preparing for NaNoWriMo... Maybe

Every year, I say I'm going to do NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that, during the month of November, you write a 50,000 word novel from start to finish. The goal is both daunting and entirely doable at the same time. It breaks down to roughly 1,600 words a day, which isn't a hard goal to reach. I did a modified version of NaNoWriMo to finish And You Tell Me I Am Home, and while I didn't write 50,000 words, I did keep up the pace until I was finished. It took me a month and a half, but I finally - finally! - had a draft finished.

Thing is, NaNoWriMo is always in November, which is a hard month for me. Not only because of the holiday and family obligations everyone has, but because I work in a mall and everything goes insane from Black Friday on. The last thing I want to face after a long day of angry Christmas shoppers (don't kid yourself, you are all angry) is a blank computer screen and a 1,600 word deadline.

Right now I'm thinking of ways I could make this manageable. Reorganzing my writing to routine to accomodate the beast, and then I could return to regularly scheduled programming once November ends. These are my ideas so far:

1) Writing practice. Instead of writing about a random prompt for 20 minutes, that time could be spent working on the novel. This way I'm assuring that for at least 20 minutes every day, something gets written.
2) Modify this blog. If I shift down to a post a week and maybe an excerpt if the writing goes well, I can turn that time into writing. I would then return to the regular posting schedule at the end of the month.

When all is said and done, it's not a difficult schedule to keep. It's just a lot of pressure for those 30 days, trying to get everything done in time. Who knows if I'll even be able to finish? At some point I feel I need to make the attempt.

And I still have two months to plan for the beast.