5 years of Nanowrimo
If you are following me and somehow still don’t know, the month of November is National Novel Writing Month, which is a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days.
I think I tried to first participate back in 2014, back when I was still free handing all my writing, which makes tracking word count almost impossible. Needless to say, I gave up very quickly. My first real Nanowrimo was in 2019, writing an urban fantasy with witches trying to solve a string of murders. I don’t even remember how I planned for this novel, but I achieved my word count.
In 2020, I wrote a book titled World Under Fire, that has now been edited and published as Sky Heart, the first book in the Ridderden Riders duology.
Last year, I wrote a stand-alone pirate fantasy novel called Blood Sails that will be published September 28, 2024.
This year, my fifth year in a row of doing Nanowrimo, I wrote the first in a ‘dark academia, but make it fae’ trilogy and the 50,000 words barely cover half of my first draft! I am still writing this novel and hope to finish it before the end of the year. This was also my first year doing Nanowrimo as a full-time author who has been writing 1k words at least twice a week for this whole year. While I still struggled at times, I am only human after all, it was definitely my easiest Nanowrimo yet. My writing muscle was exercised and strengthened and I have my planning system down for plotting out my novel so I always know what I should be writing.
It’s crazy to look back and see how far myself and my writing have come just from this simple challenge. I definitely wouldn’t be the author I am today without it. While I now have the time and routine to write more than one first draft of a novel a year, there will always be something special about Nanowrimo that sets my passion ablaze, that gets me excited for this one last goal of the year. The community I feel during this time is probably a part of it. It is just fun to go on social media and see how everyone else is doing, how they are inspiring themselves to write, and what exciting projects they are working on. I hosted two writing sprints on Instagram and had one virtual writing party with a friend and there is something special about sharing your messy work with someone. Writing can be such a lonely thing, but we have to remember that we aren’t alone, that there are people excited about what you are working on.
When I was writing Sky Heart, I didn’t know it was going to be my debut novel. I certainly didn’t think just three years later, I would get to hold it in my hands and share it with the world. It is very different now to the novel I planned and wrote for Nanowrimo 2020, but the core is the same; two broken people finding each other who believe in a better world. This novel didn’t get vlogs on Instagram while I wrote it or a full immersion write-with-me livestream, like the ones that followed it and no one will probably ever see my first Nanowrimo novel. But, they were both important in their own ways. They helped me grow, this challenge making me a more capable and confident writer.
Despite my new ability to produce works, I will still do Nanowrimo every year, for the fun, for the community, and for the challenge. I hope this inspires you to give it a try. At the end of the day, it is not about the word count, but the fact you attempted, that you pushed yourself and your writing, that you made progress.
If you want to read snippets from my 2023 Nanowrimo project, some rough draft teaser chapters are posted on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sierrajwrites
Also, if you’re on the official Nanowrimo website or want to join, you can add me at: https://nanowrimo.org/participants/sierrajwrites