Writing Advice – simone said what?

What is NaNoWriMo and Why Do I Torture Myself Every November?

It’s almost that time of year again, folks. That’s right, it’s nearly National Novel Writing Month! What is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as it’s more commonly known), you ask? Well, it’s this:

National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel during the thirty days of November.

Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand-new novel. – via nanowrimo.org

Yes, you read that right. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo and its spin-off, Camp Nano (which happens in April and July, and differs in that you set your own word-count/page/editing goals) since 2009. In fact, I wrote all of the Gold Series over three consecutive years of NaNoWriMo. I even wrote the first 50k of Cheater, Cheater in November 2015.

And every year since 2015, busy schedule be damned, I participate in this wild ride. Why? Uhhh, we’ll get to that.

If you’d like to learn more about NaNoWriMo and my tips for conquering the challenge, keep reading!

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Dubious Writing Advice with Simone: Writing Every Day

Welcome to a new series of posts that I’ve decided to call Dubious Writing Advice with Simone, where I bring you writing tips that may or may not be all that great! After all, everyone’s creative process is different, and what works for me may not work for you.

To kick things off, I want to talk about something I’ve been trying to do since the start of 2019: write every day.

I used to be one of those people who only sat down to write when either 1) the Writing Muse struck, or 2) the guilt I felt for not writing finally forced me to open a new document.

Needless to say, I was writing maybe one or two days a week at best, and once a month at worst.

Back in the day, that was fine. I was writing merely for the love of it and I had no obligations to produce content. I wasn’t making any money from it, didn’t really have to stick to a schedule, and could do things at my own pace (even if it did upset some readers… sorry, y’all)

But now I have deadlines and contracts. I have paying consumers who deserve to have their entertainment delivered on time. I have dreams of writing and querying a new project that I’ve had in mind for years. All of that means I don’t have time to laze around and wait for the Muse to strike.

So let’s talk about writing every single day and why I try my best to do it.

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