Gnash Less, Write More: National Novel Writing Month 2010

November 1 - 30 a whole lot of hopefuls will be hitting the old keyboard to try to write 50,000 words of a novel during that month.  This will be my third year.  I thought it was mostly a good idea, and I liked what they said, that people give up to easily and better just to write and write and write than give up.  You can always apply the genius in December.

In 2008 I did not finish during the month.  I didn't make it anywhere near 50k words, even though there were lots of four letter ones in it.  I did not make it to 50k.  But nevertheless my historical erotic novel, Jack Random, got written, and the manuscript is just sitting in my hard drive waiting for me to get to it again.

It was a different story in 2009.  I wrote a novel!  I wrote the entire first draft in those 30 days, then spent  the next several months turning it into a pretty dang good novel, if I say so myself!  I managed to write 80k words that month, and the book, which is now finished and at an agent's office now, turned into 113k.

I think two factors can be thanked for my success the second time around.  One is a better story, of course, but the two I refer to here are the albeit admittedly artificial structure of aiming for a certain number of words a day.  The other and perhaps more significant was the fact that my husband got that I would be rather occupied for the month, and being my Number One Fan, sans sledgehammer thankfully, he honored my space.  It is a lot harder to get that if you are doing this everyday.  The parameter of a month worked wonders.

Now I am just waiting for the National Novel Writing Month site to reset to 2010 so I can get back to planning this year.  It will be even easier and more satisfying this year, I think, because I've done it now, have the proof in manuscript form, and I can't tell myself it's too hard. 

Join me for NaNoWriMo 2010!  When you do, look me up so we can be Writing Buddies!   My username is nan_hawthorne .