Happy Writer Wednesday! For today’s WW, I wanted to share with you all how I challenged myself to write a novel in month by doing NaNoWriMo.
Yes, I Yvonne from Lost with Yvonne, wrote a whole ass novel in a month. I mean it sounds crazy?
Sometimes I can’t even believe I did it. But here we are. Months after NaNoWriMo and I have this novel I wrote in a month.
A deadline I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do. But I did!
Like what? This does sound bananas.
So I’m sure your first question will be
What is NaNoWriMo?
It’s short for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November. It’s a time where people from all over the world try and write 50,000 words in a month, ultimately writing an entire novel. There are writing groups, local meet ups, resources and so much more that happens in the month of November.
Now, why am I just bringing it up now since it’s only February?
Well, the reasoning why I decided to make this today’s Writer Wednesday is because in a few weeks the book I wrote last year as a part of NaNoWriMo will be published!
That’s right, my FOURTH book is set to be released on March 14, 2019! AHHH! (You can pre-order it here 😉
And this book I am about to publish was the novel I decided to write for NaNoWriMo!
The idea came to me while I was finishing my edits for my second book in the month of October.
And I’d heard of NaNoWriMo once prior to it coming up in 2018, but I never really gave it a chance. Until FINALLY, I decided since I had this novel idea that came from me writing my second book pop up right before NaNoWriMo, it was a sign I needed to do this challenge.
It was simple enough. Write 50,000 words in the month of November. And BOOM, you have a novel.
I decided to take this very seriously because while I had my second book out for publish, and needed to start editing my third book, I didn’t want to lose this idea and it never come to life.
So I went onto nanowrimo.org, did my sign up, filled out my profile, and come November 1st I was ready to rock and roll!
Now, disclaimer, I am what you call a fast writer. I have an idea and I can write for hours. And on average it does only take me a month to write a novel, sometimes just a few weeks. That’s how I wrote my first book.
But this time I wanted to really discipline myself because NaNoWriMo has you input your words daily, and they give you challenges or writing groups to help you in getting your writing done. And it was a fun concept to dedicate yourself to a challenge like writing 50,000 words.
Because most of the time, my writing stems from an idea that I have, and then I run with it until I decide to finish it or scrap it. I’m not quite a full time writer yet to just dedicate all my time to writing, so I go with when I can and do my best from there.
But this gave me a sense of full time writing and the perfect way to challenge me to get a book done on an actual deadline.
And let me tell you, it was much harder than I thought.
But let me also tell you, I finished 50,000 words in a month and it’s set to publish next month!
Now, I won’t go into too much detail of how I stayed motivated enough to write. I already have a post about it here. And I also wanted to go more in depth and give you a separate blog post of how I best prepared for NaNoWriMo for a future Writer Wednesday post.
I want to be better prepared for NaNoWriMo this coming year. So I’ll definitely be sharing how I’ll be preparing for it this year, and how I won’t be writing my last 1000 words on the last day of NaNoWriMo. (Yes, I hit my 50,000 words so close to midnight that I truly almost didn’t make it!)
But for this Writer Wednesday I just wanted to share a little tip of how I challenged myself to write a book in a month by taking on NaNoWriMo and becoming what they call a ‘winner’.
Yes, I am that dorky and bought a shirt that states I’m a winner. It was cool and looks like the Triwizard cup and anything Harry Potter is everything I want.
This was a bit of shorter post, but I wanted to share a little bit about NaNoWriMo, and I wanted to show that I’m living proof that you can write a book and get it published in a few months. It doesn’t need to take years and years to write, edit and publish a book. Especially when you take the self-publishing route like I did. Which has been the BEST decision of my life.
Just last month I more than tripled my book sales from when I first started writing! And I’ve never be more excited about writing all the time than now.
So please, check out NaNoWriMo. They have a great community and great resources even though it’s not National Novel Writing Month this month.
Don’t worry, I’ll probably talk about them more as the month comes closer because I’m definitely going to be participating again this coming year!
Until next time, Happy Writing!
XOXO
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XOXO
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