November 1st was the start of the annual National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This is my 9th time writing a novel (50,000 words or a short novel worth) in 30 days. This means 1,667 words a day. It doesn’t seem so hard when I break it down that way.
I have completed my goal in 6 out of the past 8 NaNos, which is not bad. I hadn’t guessed I’d done that well. The other two years I had extenuating circumstances such as depression and Trump’s election (and also depression). Sometimes I was writing a novel and for one of those years, I was a renegade editing another novel.
I have chosen for the past couple of years to write the consecutive Kringle Chronicles novels. This is ideal because I can write them during the beginning of the holiday season and take advantage of the Christmasy goings-on. (If November seems too early for this, I’m sitting in a Starbucks where they’re putting up Starbucks Red holiday trappings.)
This year’s book, Kringle on Fire, is fighting me tooth and nail. It’s hard because of the characters being foreign to me — a firefighter and a two-year-old are among my characters. They require a lot of research. So the writing is going slowly for someone who’s used to writing 4000 words a day. It’s going to take me the entire month to write this and I’m not sure I’ll finish it.
Time for positive self-talk! I’ve done this before!
Wish me luck!
Words Like Me 