I plan to do Novel November again this year. Novel November is the inheritor of NaNoWriMo, only with corporate backing. The corporate backing comes from ProWritingAid, which is ironic because they have some ties with AI in their proofreading interface, and NaNo’s stance on generative AI was part of that organization’s downfall. (A good part of their downfall was also some unsavory predation on their notes forums).
(For the record, I use AI as a tool. I use it for research, for proofreading, and for generating ideas. I do not use it for writing.)
Anyhow, I am doing my traditional “November is the month to write Christmas novels” month of writing. Even though I have not been writing daily. I have been writing weekly (or weakly, as the case may be). Despite that, I am committing to 1,667 words a day or 50,000 words total during the month of November.
This year’s novel already has almost 10,000 words written on it. It’s a novel I tried to write a couple of years ago before the situation between the protagonists became so daunting I didn’t think they could ever get together (and I am the author!) I’m going to try it again, because it’s a fake relationship story and I’ve never written one of those before. She’s an author on sabbatical, he’s an executive chef, and they meet at a lodge 7 hours away from her home. So the barriers are time and circumstance. There’s also an ex-husband, a curmudgeonly Santa Claus, and the lodge itself, a wonder of CCC construction in the middle of a state park. (People who know me will recognize the lodge as Starved Rock Lodge, the jewel of the Illinois state parks system.)
I’m writing the bones right now to prep the writing. Novel November touts this as Prep October, so I am prepping. I am a plantser in writing slang, which means I prepare a bare outline of events and write freely within those constraints. I’m working on the bare outline.
There’s no guarantee of success, given that this is a hard-to-write book from a person who hasn’t been writing steadily in the past several months (almost a year), so I think this counts as a Big Audacious Goal. Even though I’ve written several novels already.
Wish me luck.
