Challenging myself for November with NaNoWriMo

This year NaNoWriMo is celebrating it’s 20th anniversary, and I’ll be joining in. That weird and slightly awkward acronym stands for National Novel Writing Month which takes place in November of every year. You don’t have to be a novel writer, it’s a personal challenge and you can write anything at all – including non-fiction or blogging, but in order to win, you need to write 50,000 words in the month.

When I say win, this isn’t a competition and there are no prizes, but you can call yourself a NaNoWriMo winner if you complete the challenge. It’s all about personal motivation and personal success, which is a big part of what writing is about.

Usually I write anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 words a month on the blogs that I contribute to, primarily this one, but I do write for the Welsh Gaming Network and For The Family as well, as well as contributing guest posts and articles to other websites. These are all non-fiction, but here’s an interesting fact about me you probably don’t know, since I’ve never mentioned it on the blog before:

I also love to write fiction, and I dream of being a published novelist.

So for my personal challenge this November I’m going to push myself to write 50,000 words on my fiction novel, which is a fantasy novel titled The Broken Key. It follows the story of a slave girl trying to survive whilst a Kingdom falls apart around her, with a lot of extra magic and shenanigans thrown in. That’s not going to be my blurb when it’s finished, mind you.

If you’re interested in finding out more information and joining in this challenge then there’s a fantastic official website and forums, where you can create your book project, update your daily word count and get help from thousands of great writers.

I won’t be slacking on the blog mind you, I’ll still be publishing my blog posts several times a week as usual, but if you follow me over on Twitter I’ll be updating with my word counts and chatting with #WritingCommunity and if anyone else is thinking about joining in, please do, so we can support each other!

I’ve been dreaming of writing a book for a long time and I think it’s important we try to chase our dreams, no matter how unlikely it seems that they’ll work out.

P.S This post was a measly 400 or so words, which makes me realize 50,000 is going to be quite a lot for one month!