November is National Novel Writing Month

[JD]

For the last few years now November has been National Novel Writing Month, where writers are supposed to challenge themselves to write 50,000 words by the end of the month. I was just wondering if any our resident writers are taking part in the challenge this year or have in the past? If you did what book/s were you writing at the time?

 

[DimesDan]

National Novel Writing Month

I was under the impression this was an INTERnational thing, not just for the United States.

 

[Thrawn]

It certainly is, but it started as National and has become commonly abbreviated as NaNoWriMo, so the name has stuck even as the scope has grown.

 

[Greg Cox]

Writing a novel in a month? Please, some of us call that Tuesday.

 

[Idran]

Writing a novel in a month? Please, some of us call that Tuesday.

I've heard of a month of Sundays, but...

 

[Charles Phipps]

Yep, National Writing Month is my favorite month-long holiday.

It's when I got my first novel, Cthulhu Armageddon written, and later my first published novel. This month I'm finishing off the sequel to my space opera Lucifer's Star.

I owe the good folks here at Trek Lit here a lot for always giving me endless reading material for inspiration during my process. I was reading Watching the Clock when I wrote LS two years ago.

 

[James Swallow]

It's become a cliche for pro authors to say this, and it in no way is meant to denigrate those who use this as a spur to get themselves writing, but Greg's right when he says that most of us jobbing writers do this every month...

But for people who need a kick-start or who are just getting air under the wings of their writing career, it's an excellent way to test your mettle. Writing is one of those things you need to do for a bit to see if you're actually any good at it, and committing to doing 50k in a month will teach you a lot of important lessons.