50k words in a month? How I got on with NaNoWriMo.

Time to get those ideas out of your head and onto the page…

I first heard of NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - back in 2022.

NaNoWriMo aims to get novel ideas out of the heads of young writers by tasking them to write 50,000 words in the month of November. It’s run by a US non-profit, and you can learn more about it via the link above.

Since its inception, the exercise has been taken up by writers young and old, first-timers and more experienced writers. Some people use it to start a new work, others to make progress with, or finish, a novel.

50,000 words, for the uninitiated, is about half a reasonably lengthy standard novel, the greater part of many literary novels and about a third of a chunky fantasy, horror or SF book (the genres which are most forgiving of longer books).

My first reaction to NaNoWriMo when I heard about it was: “that’s mad”. But in fact it’s 1,667 words per day, which for most full-time fiction writers is hardly breaking sweat.

That’s not to say it’s easy! As I found when I tried it this year, if you miss a day then you’re looking down the barrel of 3,500 the next day, which is a fair whack.

But NaNoWriMo isn’t supposed to be a tedious slog. It’s supposed to be fun and challenging - never mind the quality feel the wordcount! Get your ideas down first and work them into shape later.

My experience was interesting. I managed 23,000 words in the first ten days, had a rest day then got diverted into writing a short story I’d had an idea for. That took me three days (c 5,000 words) and then I had a friend up for the weekend so had a few more days off. I wrote in fits and starts from then on.

By the end of the month I’d added 33,353 words to my - now increasingly epic - fantasy novel, plus the short and some background work on the novel.

While I didn’t hit the 50k, I’d made serious progress. The discipline of NaNoWriMo - coinciding with a slightly fallow period work-wise and some awful weather outside! - worked for me big-time.

If you’ve ever fancied having a crack at writing, it’s worth taking a look at NaNoWriMo to see what it’s all about. And you don’t need to wait until next November! Doing it at the same time as others works as encouragement, but writing is fundamentally a solitary task, so there’s no time like the present to get going.