Are you still debating taking up the great noveling challenge that is Nanowrimo? If so, I’m here to tell you why you should attempt to write a 50, 000 word work of fiction next month.
1. Challenge It’s always important to challenge yourself. That’s how you grow as a person and as a writer. You might not think you can write 50, 000 words in a month or even 10, 000 words in a month, but you’ll never know unless you try. You’ll never surpass your expectations if you never challenge yourself. And until you’ve done it, you’ll never know what it feels like to validate your word count on November 30th with ten minutes left.
Thousands of people have written their first books with Nanowrimo. Some of these people have walked away with little other than an awful manuscript and a winner’s certificates, but others have learned a lot from the experience. Most of the basic things I learned about novelling I learned from Nanowrimo.
2. Community The community on the Nanowrimo forums is something entirely special, like nothing else I’ve ever seen on the internet. Thousands of people from all over the world, from all different walks of life, come together to write a novel in one month. They might not have anything in common except Nanowrimo-but at the same time, they might be very similar.
Age, gender, and race don’t really matter in Nanowrimo. We’re all people who love books, who love to write, and that’s all we need to know. We might not talk most of the year, but we have a special bond that will never disappear, and October and November are always lively. Nanoers are incredibly friendly and incredibly helpful.
3. Building Habits Participating in Nanowrimo gives you extra incentive to write every day and helps you to build good writing habits. They say it takes 30 days to make a habit, so why not write 1, 667 words every day in November, and see if you can keep writing 1, 667 words every day?
Even if Nanowrimo doesn’t influence you to write every day for the rest of the year, it’s sure to increase your productivity. Each year I write more and more in the off season. And so do dozens of other people. Some of us even do Nanowrimo-based challenges, which I’ll talk more about at the end of next month.
So, are you going to write a 50, 000 word work of fiction next month?