Normally October is a great month for me. The weather in DC is crisp, the air has enough of a chill to it to make that leather jacket I couldn’t even contemplate during summer seem appealing. The leaves are interesting colors, and the crockpot becomes a viable cooking device again. Normally.
This October has been unsettled at best and downright weird at worst. The weather has been all over the place – shirt sleeves one day, my winter coat two days later – and work has been so strange that today we passed the point at which I stop caring what happens and everything becomes ridiculous.
And yet…this year I’m writing a book. Yes, I’m “doing” NaNoWriMo.
To that end, I share the pep talk that went out today.
November 1: At midnight, local time, start writing your book. You need to log 1,667 words per day to stay on par. The website will be very slow for the first few days of the event, but with patience you can update your soaring word count in that box at the top of our site. Watch your stats graph fill. Send a link to your author profile to your friends so they can follow your progress. Revel in the majesty of your unfolding story. It’s November 1! You are an unstoppable novel-writing machine!
November 2: Stop writing. Wonder if you should start over. Keep going. Feel better.
November 8: As the first full week of writing comes to a close, you will be at 11,666 words. This is more fiction than most people write in their lifetimes, and you did it in a week. Go, you! This is also Municipal Liaison Appreciation Day, a raucous international holiday that celebrates NaNoWriMo’s volunteer chapter-heads (the folks who organized the write-in you went to last week). Chocolate, flowers, and gifts of expensive electronics are appreciated.
November 13: Nothing really happens on November 13.
November 15: After the second week of writing, you will be at 25,000 words. This is the approximate length of such legendary works of fiction as The Metamorphosis, Of Mice and Men, and Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion. You’re halfway to winning! Attend a Midway Party in your town.
November 16: The second half of NaNoWriMo dawns. Writerly confidence builds. Your book comes to life, and characters start doing interesting, unexpected things. Nice. Weird.
November 22: After the third full week of writing, you stand at 35,000 words, the NaNoWriMo milestone universally recognized as The Place Where Everything Gets Much Easier. This is also when you fly out to San Francisco and join us for the Night of Writing Dangerously Write-a-thon, where you’ll help us set records for group noveling and candy consumption.
November 25: Novel validation and winning begins, and Word-Count Progress Bars turn from blue (under 50K) to green (over 50K) to purple (over 50k and a verified winner!). Check our FAQs for details on uploading your manuscript and winning. A limited number of 2009 Winner T-shirts will appear in the store. These will make you smile, and will feature a squirrel.
November 26: American Wrimos celebrate the true meaning of Thanksgiving by gathering together with friends and family, wolfing down a huge meal as quickly as possible, and then ditching those friends and family to hide in the bathroom with a laptop.
November 30: By midnight, local time, we will all be the proud owners of 50,000-word novels that we barely could have imagined on October 31. Plan to attend your local NaNoWriMo Thank God It’s Over Party, where grins will abound, champagne will flow, fives will be highed, and wrists will be iced.
You did it. We all did it.
December 1: Sleep will fall heavily across NaNoLand, as 150,000 writers close the book on a crazy, oversized dream.
December 2: The “I Wrote A Novel, Now What?” page goes up on the NaNoWriMo site, containing some special items for our winners from sponsors CreateSpace and Scrivener, along with advice on revision and next steps from published NaNoWriMo authors.
December 3: Rewrites begin.
It all starts very soon, brave writer! Here’s to a great month together!
So, fair warning: my blog posts will be even more sporadic than they have been of late but know it is for a good cause.
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