50,000 Words and Beyond

Every November, for the past several years, I join thousands of writers around the world for that 30-day frenzy known as NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words during that time. Not a novel, per se, but a pretty darn good start.

A couple of my short novels were even published: Death Sword and The Ripper's Daughter. (I have the rights back to the latter, which I will be putting up on Amazon, B&N, and Kobo, hopefully before the end of the year. But that's another story.)

Anyway, last year, I wrote a 65,000-word political  thriller in 21 days. This year, I wrote 68,000 words in the same length of time. And I'm still writing. Today, I should reach 72,000 with my paranormal suspense, the overall goal being 75,000-80,000 words. And I plan to finish this new novel by November 30.

Why push myself? I don't know. Guess I take it as a challenge. I wanted to get the 50,000 words written as early as possible, and 5,000 words a day seemed reasonable. After that, I dropped the writing down to 2,000 words daily. All that, while revising another book and working on another project (not writing related).

Although NaNoWriMo is almost over, you can check out the site year round. So if you've always wanted to write a novel, and needed a boost, NaNoWriMo might very well be worth checking into.

Happy Writing!