National Novel Writing Month 2014

This will be my third year blogging during National Novel Writing Month and my ninth year of participating.

For a cool breakdown or a place to get some questions answered, please refer to this website:  NANOWRIMO LOOK AT IT

From last years blog post (which I think is a good explanation): National Novel Writing Month is November, which means that the writers of the world sometimes attempt to write a whole novel within a month. On the link I posted above, there is a website that helps to keep track of a word count, and the word count goal is to hit 50,000 words by the end of November. When it hits 11:59PM on November 30th; 50,000 words.

It's also awesome to get involved with the NaNoWriMo website as there are a lot of great community aspects to the NaNoWriMo website. People can join a region to post on forum boards, attend write-ins, and go to NaNo happenings in their area. A great way to connect to the writing world. I typically only use the website to keep track of my word counts because they have a lot of neat graphs. Personally, I'm not a social writer, so while I am a part of a region, I usually don't participate in events because I am hermit. Yesssss.

I've been participating in NaNoWriMo every year since 2005 and have completed the challenge every year. I still haven't tried to get anything published because I'm a terrible procrastinator and look at a lot of stuff I've written with a dreadful, why sense. But, something might happen.

During November, I will be posting my word count and whatever I feel like.

WHATEVER I FEEL LIKE.

It's wild card posts in November (again).

I do not guarantee any frequency of posts.
I do not guarantee any book reviews.
I do not guarantee any recipes.

I do guarantee that anything I post will most likely have an element of rambling in it.
I do guarantee I'll post something because I'm alive, kicking, and being awesome in general.
I do guarantee that I have no idea what I'm doing in November for blog posts myself.

...

I encourage you to join me in writing for National Novel Writing Month; even if you don't think you can hit the 50,000 words, it's good to try. It's good to create. It's good to do something that has an element of insanity to it every once in a while.

IT'S GOING TO ROCK.

...

I have had a request for any advice that I may have from the many years of NaNo writing I've done.

In my experience, that giant 50,000 word count always looms over me for the month of November. I personally like to schedule writing time for myself so it's much easier for me to go places or do things in my life while not stressing about how much time I'm wasting not writing. I also get out as much story as I can in the first week because that's when I'm most enthusiastic about writing and have tons of creative ideas. I usually keep a notebook handy to carry around to jot down ideas as I have them when I'm away from my computer.

If I'm having a hard time writing out an action scene, I'll demand the nearest person (usually a hapless friend) to act it out with me. If I'm struggling with a particular setting, I'll google image search keywords of things I'm looking for. Sometimes I'll create a doodle of places just so I have that as reference. As far as coming up with names, I usually find databanks of names for things. My favorite is using street names from multiple cities because there are so many weird ones out there.

That's all the NaNo advice I have for now.

Happy writing!