Writing NANOWRIMO

Today is the first day of NANOWRIMO, or the National Novel Writing Month. For those who are not familiar, people start today and write for thirty days, at the end of the month they have finished writing a book. Many will write short stories, novellas, and some novels, but the important thing is to start writing.

I believe in writing 500 words a day, because it will allow you to consistently write, build your writing muscles, and help you to achieve your goal of writing a book. If you want to write a novel, they say the average novel is 50,000 words, which would mean 1,667 words a day. However many famous novels, like The Great Gatsby, are less than 50,000 words. As I said, the important thing is to begin writing, consistently write, and to not edit until you finished the rough draft.

Doing these three things will allow you to complete your story, novel, or play. From there editing, improvements, and polishing can happen, but you can’t polish what’s not yet written. I mention this because of the pitfall of trying to make the rough draft perfect while you’re writing the rough draft. It most likely will need at least some rewriting, so I would recommend not agonizing over every word in the beginning.

If you will allow me to, I’d like to be a guide on your journey, because I’ve been there over thirty times. Currently I have over thirty titles on Amazon. I don’t only love to write, I love to help others write their book, to tell their story. What you have to say is important, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, it can help someone. An I want to help you to help them.

It’s my hope that you will begin your writing journey today, and by the end of this month, have a completed draft of your work to share. Like anything else, there will be challenges along the way, but I promise you, you can overcome them. There are tools and methods that can help you go from dreaming of writing, to being a writer.

We can talk more about them over the next month, for today I would encourage you to write. If you write one sentence, then try to add three or four more to it to make a paragraph. Once you’ve written a paragraph, I’d challenge you to write four or five more. Before you know it, you’ve written half a page, or 500 words, and you’ve completed day one of your writing journey.

Some days you will write more, others you will write less. The average will result in inspiration, motivation, momentum, and success. You can get to the last page of your book, one word at a time.