National Novel Writing Month Recap and Results

Well, as most of you know, I started off the month of November with the best of intentions for completing National Novel Writing Month. Unfortunately, I didn’t complete my 50,000 word assignment, but I did have a great time with the experience. Event founder Chris Baty said that 59,000 people signed up and almost 10,000 reached their goal of finishing. “I suggest we spend the next eleven months exploring a few other appealing, impractical items on our to-do lists. Whether you wrote 5,000 or 50,000 words in November, you bravely stepped up to NaNoWriMo’s challenge, and created more fiction than most people do in a lifetime. You’re a hero and an inspiration, and I wish you many more creative adventures in the coming months.”

I do think this is a worthy and admirable adventure. NaNoWriMo releases us from our inner critics and editors and fosters writing for the sheer fun of it. And that is something we all need to remember from time to time.

For me, my focus was pulled away from NaNoWriMo by an assignment from a great new tattoo and style magazine, Inked, a couple of submissions to Continuum’s 33 1/3 series of music books, and a few magazine pitches. So I feel like the NaNoWriMo schedule definitely helped me churn out a lot of work this past month, even if it wasn’t always directed towards my novel.

Keep an eye on Baty and his band of literary merry men… I think we’ll hear a lot from the NaNoWriMo crowd in the future.