The Writer’s Technology Companion Celebrates NaNoWriMo!
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It’s November, and that means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short and harder to type), that wonderful time of year when writers and would-be writers throw off the bounds of sanity and commit themselves to writing a full-fledged novel in a month. And it’s not even one of the long, 31-day months!
I don’t write novels (not yet, anyway…) and I have other commitments for this month anyway, so I won’t be doing the crazy “March to 50,000 Words” that NaNoWriMo participants are engaged in. But I didn’t want to stay out of the game entirely, so I’ve decided to celebrate and support NaNoWriMo this year, even though I’m not technically taking the challenge.
Over the next month, you’ll find interviews with a good number of folks who have participated in NaNoWRiMo in the past, with their advice for hanging in and making your time count. (Special thanks to everyone who agreed to be interviewed!) You’ll also find tips and motivation from me on getting and staying productive – my hope is that naNoWriMo writers will pop by every couple days or so for a few minutes of advice before diving back into their works-in-progress.
Of course, Aaron Peters is continuing his series on Linux and open source tools for writers, which has been great so far. And we may have some other guest posts, from familiar guests like Stephanie Siavetti and maybe a new guest or two. And later this week I’ll announce the winner of the iMindMap giveaway!
So stay tuned all month – this is gonna be FUN!
You could do what I do: Nano-WriMo, as in “teeny tiny amount of writing each day!” 😀
As I see it, the big takeaway from NaNo is not the output, but rather the discipline — training yourself to carve out the time every day to write, and experiencing the “rush” that you get when you give yourself that time. Eventually, you start to look forward to it, even crave it, and then you can’t live without it. (Which poses its own dangers, IMHO)
Taking the time to “just write” is the biggest hurdle for a lot of writers, myself included…