Na Na Na NaNoWriMo!
NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is an annual writing exercise that takes place in November. The idea is that over the month, a person writes fifty-thousand words. Now, that’s not a whole novel. In a lot of cases, it may not even be half a novel. But it is a considerable amount of writing that, in theory, should put a sizable dent in whatever it is you’re trying to write. It’s an opportunity to finally start that book idea you’ve been thinking about or to finish that book that you’ve been struggling to write all year. Mostly, for me at least, it’s about the sense of community. It’s fun to check Twitter (RIP?) and Instagram and see a bunch of people’s word counts steadily increasing. It boosts my motivation and posting my own word count gives me a clear daily goal and the accountability of other people watching me shoot for it.
So how exactly am I going to be spending this NaNoWriMo? That’s actually a bit complicated. I haven’t really discussed it much on this blog, but I am currently writing a novel. I started it in early spring and have been working on it over the year. However, a whole lot of life events ranging from “exceptionally wonderful” to “mildly awful” have filled the time between then and now which has held me back from establishing a solid routine for writing. In a lot of ways, this month is an excuse for me to get back on track and build a functional daily routine for myself that I’ll actually be able to stick to beyond November. Of course, the life events haven’t stopped and I’m going to be moving at the end of the month. (Don’t worry, that falls under the “exceptionally wonderful” category!) There’s a lot of work involved with moving and I’m trying to calibrate my word goal so that it won’t interfere with me doing my fair share of it. To that end, I’ve decided that my goal is going to be twenty-seven thousand words, slightly over half of the normal goal. It’s something I’ll have to buckle down and work for, but I can reasonably achieve it without shirking my responsibilities as long as I manage my time effectively.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ll be posting daily updates of my progress on Instagram along with cryptic photos of my chicken scratch.
They’ll look something like this. It’s English, I swear!
I’ll do my best to make sure the posts are daily, but life is crazy right now so I’m not promising anything. As some of you might have noticed, I’ve been updating this website more frequently as well and I’m going to do my best to maintain a steady stream of updates. Will I succeed? Will the workload crush me and send me into a spiraling pit of despair? Who knows?! Tune in each day to find out!
...But actually, there’s some other stuff I want to talk about, so I’d appreciate it if you reread that last line once you reach the end of this post. Mostly, I just want to go over a few odds and ends while I have your attention. First of all, to the people reading this article, thank you so much. The number of visitors to this site has been increasing slowly but steadily, and it has been hugely gratifying to see. It’s my sincere hope that everyone who visits can find something they enjoy, and I’ll be doing my best to create even more as we head into the new year. I’m still new to the whole website thing and there are a lot of things that I’m learning as I go. One of the biggest things I’ve been learning about is how to use social media. I’ve been sharing links to my posts through Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bobisbob7/) and Twitter (RIP???) (@IamBob77) and I plan to keep doing so going forward. If you have any questions or feedback, you can reach me through either one (though I’m more active on Instagram). I would love to hear from you.
One of my goals with this website is not just to share my own work, but to share all of the things I think are cool. I want to do book reviews and maybe tv and movie reviews as well. There’s also all kinds of odd, random, things that I’m dying to talk about and maybe some serious stuff too. Most of all, I want to help create a platform for other people to share their work as well. If there’s something you’re interested in and you want me to talk about, or if there’s something that you want to talk about, let me know. You can reach me through either of those social media pages or through this website.
Well, that was a wordy and long-winded post. It looks like I’m going to be finishing up at around eight-hundred words and, depending on how things go, I may end up adding them on to my NaNoWriMo word count. Maybe. Thanks again for reading all these weird rambling things that I write. I’ll be back again with more soon. Count on it.