November Is National Novel Writing Month

Yep, it's NaNoWriMo time again, and this is the fifth year I'll participate. I think I've only finished and hit my goal once, but that doesn't keep me from signing up every year. It's an opportunity to renew my resolve to write daily, and to work on projects other than articles and blogging. I don't even necessarily try my hand at fiction, though that's the scariest and the most fun. For me, just getting into the writing groove with a (now) huge group of fellow writers, has a persuasive power that I don't get from smaller groups and certainly not on my own. (To give you an idea of how large this group has grown, just over 3% of the group has donated and has already raised over a quarter million dollars to fund their Young Writers Program.)

I've written hundreds more pages during NaNoWriMo than I would have written otherwise, and every word has honed my writing skills. Some of them are even downright good, and someday I'll do something with them. I don't feel one second of energy and effort was wasted.

What about you? Are you signing up for a month of intense writing? It's really only 6.67 pages a day, and sounds manageable when stated that way. If you haven't take the plunge, do it! Tomorrow, I'll talk about how to proceed - as a pantser or a plotter.

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Dani Greer is a founding member of the Blood-Red Pencil, runs the Blog Book Tours classroom, and a related social site and blog, and now has joined the team at Little Pickle Press, a wonderful kidlit publisher with a strong environmental and philanthropic focus.