It’s that time of year again! November is a great time of year for writers to kick themselves in the pants and just write.

If you’ve never participated, it’s National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. It’s a tall order for many, but for most of us, it’s a fantastic community of writers that comes together and inspires each other to just get the words down already.

Whether you’re a chronic procrastinator, or a perfectionist self-editor, NaNoWriMo uses visual aids and rewards to motivate and incentivize writing for writing’s sake.

I’ve participated a few years in the past and I don’t know what kind of magic it is, but something about it has always pushed me to get through a flailing draft. In order to hit the word counts, you have to abandon the self-editor and just create. You don’t have time to give the inner critic a voice, because you have to hit almost 1,700 words per day. If you want to win – which includes discounts on some cool writing programs and tools – there’s no time to mull over how you could or should have written that better, or go back and obsessively rewrite and revise and rewrite it again. The name of the game is just write, and keep going.

You can learn more about it and sign up at nanowrimo.org

If you would like to add me, you can find my profile at https://nanowrimo.org/participants/sherizard

I’ll be honest, I don’t interact much with their community on the website, but you will find me in their Facebook group. And as always, if you would like to get in touch with me to gab about how you’re doing, you can do so in the comments here, or on my own socials.