As the nights get longer and cooler, talk of NaNoWriMo prep is starting to heat up. I’ve participated before, but never reached the goal of 50,000 words during the month of November. Even though doing it in thirty days doesn’t work for me, I do want to finally reach the personal goal of finishing a novel that I have been talking about since I told my grandmother I’d buy her a Ferrari when I published my first book.
I was five.
To that end, I’ve enrolled in a nine-month intensive with Literary Arts. Over the next 36 weeks, I’ll work with a cohort to learn about the novel and write and workshop my own draft. I’ve broken the goal down to a manageable 500 words per day, five days per week. At the end of the 36 weeks I should have a really shitty 90,000 word draft to rewrite.
The workshop, and my drafting, kick off on September 14. I’m sharing here to get comfortable saying out loud that I’m working on a novel and for accountability. I’ll journal my progress here.