A Word on Wednesday: Novel

Novel, noun: 

a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity, portraying 
characters and usually presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes.

Writing a novel has eluded me. And it's not for lack of want. It is, to be honest, for lack of wanting it enough. I am, you see, a real fine starter. I'm 36,000 words into to one book, 6,000 words into another, and outlines on half a dozen others.  

But alas there has been no novel completed from this desk. My reasons and excuses are many and uninteresting. I didn't dig deep enough. Commit long enough. Focus clearly enough. Sacrifice greatly enough. Pursue purposely enough. Imagine creatively enough. And on the story goes. 

Enter November 2017. Now. This very minute.  

NaNo, NaNo, NaNo ..... 

BATMAN! (This sounds really dumb and cliche and what does it even mean? But, I won't delete it, because if I delete every sentence I write I might not ever finish. AND, NaNo is all about finishing!)

NaNo, NaNo, NaNo .... National Novel Writing Month

Well, actually the full acronym is NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo just doesn't have the ring to it that NaNo does. This online writing challenge was founded in 1999. In short, writers all over the world take up the challenge to complete an entire novel in a month. You can read more about the nonprofit and register your story here.

NaNo defines a novel as 50,000, although that is far shy of a published book. NaNo considers the challenge to create first draft. Perfection is not stressed. This equates to roughly 1,600 words a day or more simply, 2,000 words daily if you take five days off -- Saturdays and Thanksgiving for example. For non word counters, approximately 8-10 pages each writing day.  

So cheers to NaNo. Raise a pen to word counts and habit forming. My nieces, ages eleven and nine, say, "You got this." or "Come on, you got this." 

To my fellow NaNo-ers, "You got this!  See you at the finish!"