NANOWRIMO LITE?

As our social media feeds fill up with people getting ready to leap into NANOWRIMO, tips for tackling NANOWRIMO, and versions of anything NANOWRIMO (I am also guilty of this, I know!), it makes me wonder: what about the writers who feel peer pressure to “do NANOWRIMO” but don’t actually want to?

I fall a bit into this category. I’m not officially signing up to “do NANOWRIMO” this November, but I have decided to take it as a bit of a challenge to myself. I’ve been doing research for my book for ages and have enough research to write Part One. I say this as a person who could happily research something forever (I am a historian/archivist by early training), so in that sense I never feel like there is such a thing as “enough” research, but realistically speaking you can tell when hit a good point, can’t you?

So, NANOWRIMO peer pressure made me decide to do what you might call “NANOWRIMO LITE”. I’m not signed up for anything official. I’m not tracking my progress by number of words. I’m probably  starting out with old-fashioned pen and paper and typing later on, because I just do better that way.

For some people, November becomes about a community of writers supporting each other and aiming for deadlines because they work better that way, and I love that for them. I cheer them on every step of their journey and hope I’ll be reading some amazing books down the line that came out of this year’s NANOWRIMO beginnings. For others, like me, for whatever reason, we are maybe more the quiet challenge of a “NANOWRIMO LITE”. And I love that for us too. 

Remember all those lovely quotes we see on our feed about not comparing ourselves negatively to others, because we can all celebrate each other’s successes without it taking away from our own? November has become the perfect time to remember and practice that. Let’s celebrate each other as writers and cheer each other on in our goals, our successes (big and small), and support each other in all ways. Because we all benefit as we all dream.