It’s November again, and that can only mean one thing. It’s time for NaNoWriMo! “National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing.” You spend the entire month of November working on a new novel.
Though I won’t be participating this year, I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines. You can peek at my NaNoWriMo profile here. I’ve participated a total of three times.
In 2017, I wrote 12,869 words of a novel titled This is Home. I did not finish that novel. It was a survival story. A woman running with her young baby from an abusive husband who is determined to run her down, quite possibly literally. She finds a safe haven. A place to call home. A home she’s willing to take a stand for with a group of friends who have become more like family and will stand with her.
The time before that was in 2012 when I only managed 5,397 words of a novel that never even earned itself a title. A woman had inherited a house from her grandmother. It was probably going to be a haunted house. I don’t actually remember this story, but NaNoWriMo has hung on to the details for me.
My first NaNoWriMo was in 2011. I had only just discovered NaNoWriMo at the end of November 2010. I wasn’t sure how anybody could possibly write a novel in just 30 short days, but I was going to give it my all. And give it my all I did.
It started off as a nightmare. That nightmare had me waking up in a cold sweat through much of October. I knew that I had to get it out of my head, or I would likely never sleep again. And so it became my NaNoWriMo for that year.
I worked laboriously. I forsook all of my usual cooking and cleaning duties and left them to my husband, who thankfully stepped up without question. I was determined to be finished with this book that I’d dove in head first to write before Thanksgiving rolled around on the 24th.
Somehow, y’all, I managed to do it! I could not have done it if it weren’t for the help of my husband and a whole lot of cooperation from my kids (then 13 and 5). With that awesome support system, my first novel, Child Eater, was born.
Child Eater is a paranormal thriller that follows private investigator Tabitha as she takes on the case of a missing 5-year-old girl who may have been taken by a malevolent and supernatural entity known by locals as the Child Eater.
Do you have a novel in you?
What do you think? Do you have what it takes to write a novel in thirty days or less? Why not give it a try? What have you got to lose?
Sign up at NaNoWriMo.org
Good luck to everyone participating this year!
ShldBWriting 