Ah, November. The month when writers all over the world will fire up their computers and prepare to begin the arduous task of completing a 50,000 word manuscript in one month.
National Novel Writing Month has become a global phenomenon. I know a lot of writers who are doing it this month, but I won’t be among them.
And it’s not because I don’t believe it’s possible to write 50,000 words in a month, or that I’m against writing fast (just a quick look at my output over the past year will prove differently). It’s that for me, every month is now NaNoWriMo.
I don’t always write 50,000 words a month, but I write 2,000 words a day, five days a week. In a way, NaNoWriMo helped me with that. I wrote my first novel, Fallen, as part of NaNoWriMo. And it was tough. But it also helped me realize that a book didn’t have to be the year(s)-long project I always thought it had to be in the past. And it’s important to understand that.
I think NaNoWriMo is great for people who are trying to get into a writing habit. I think it’s good to see what it’s like to write at that kind of a breakneck speed and to try and build up a daily writing routine. I think it’s especially great for those people who write as a hobby.
But if you’re trying to build up a body of work, I don’t think you should stop on midnight of December 1st. Instead, I think you should keep going. Is your book completed by the end of November? Great! Then in December, begin work on the next book. Go at a slower pace if you have to. Just don’t wait until November 2016 to begin that next title.
So should you do NaNoWriMo? Why not? It’s a great way to write in a community and it’s easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm. But don’t let that community and that enthusiasm detract you from what’s most important—getting those words in. Join NaNoWriMo, have fun on the forums, and then when December comes, keep writing every day.