NaNoWriMo 2017 – A Plea for Accountability

Today is D-day for all NaNoWriMo participants! Just in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal of participants is to write 50,000 words on an original project in the month of November. Winners get bragging rights and a sense of accomplishment that will (hopefully) carry them through the editing process on that brand new manuscript.

I have participated in NaNoWriMo several times, but last year was the first year I won. I was over the moon excited because I met my goal and had 50k words worth of a story that I was super duper excited about. And I thought to myself, “You should be able to knock the rest of the first draft out by the end of the year, or at least by the end of January if you were able to write the first 50,000 words in one month! You only have to write about two-thirds as many words per day as you have been – c’mon me, you can do it!”

I did not do it.

I stalled out and wrote about 2,000 more words between then and now, much to my chagrin. And that is why I am publicly announcing my modified participation in NaNoWriMo 2017 – I want you guys to hold me accountable! If you are reading this then you have my permission to bug the everliving heck out of me for the rest of this month about my word count progress. For seriously realz, ask me about my word count!!! I need to have a t-shirt printed that says that…

Just to give you a point of reference to help you judge my progress, I’m starting off today (Day 1) with 52,024 words in my manuscript.  My word count goal (based on the information in this article) is to get to around 80,000 words before I type ‘The End’.

Doable? I think so, but only time will tell. What I do know is that I’m absolutely in love with the story I started last year and I very badly want to finish it, polish it, and publish it for others to enjoy, fulfilling my lifelong dream of publishing a novel.

Catch you later – I’ve got to go write!