Once again, I will be participating in the wonderful NaNoWriMo this November. If you don't know what NaNo is, it's an event that anybody over the age of 13 can participate in from anywhere in the world. You spend the entire month of November trying to write a 50,000 word novel. Yes, 50k words in a month is actually possible, I've done it three times now (this year will be my fifth NaNo overall) - it equates to writing 1667 words every day for the whole month, but there's little tips and dirty tricks that aren't against the rules that you can employ to help boost your word count!

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and the HQ is in Berkley, California, USA which is not where I live, as I'm actually from England. Wish I could be an intern at their office :( Anyway, NaNo is amazing and like I said, this will be my fifth year. If you're under the age of 13 and want to have a shot, there's YWP NaNo (Young Writers Project) where you do the exact same thing except you can choose a more fitting word goal for yourself. Like, you can't expect a 6 year-old to write a full, sprawling 50,000 word hunk of writerly vomit, can you? I do believe you can find the YWP site here. 

We call getting your 50k or more in November 'winning', but everybody is super nice and supportive, so even if you write 500 words, we all still congratulate you because DUDE. YOU WROTE 500 WORDS FOR AN AMAZING PROJECT THAT YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE WRITTEN OTHERWISE! GO YOU! YOU OFFICIALLY NANOED! If you 'win', you can get paperback copies of one of your original works from self-publishing companu CreateSpace (I think you have to pay for p&p now, but you never used to have to). 

If you're interested and are considering joining us in the amazing madness, you can take a peeky here. My profile on the site is here if you want to see some of the stuff I ramble about on there and stuff. 

I always try to do a different genre each year: my first 2 years (2010 and 2011) were horror/supernatural, but I ditched my 2011 novel and continued a rewrite of my 2010 one xD I'm a rebel. In 2012, I tried my hand at thriller/suspense/dystopian which I ADORED writing, although my characters were not ones that I am fond of (I'm not sure why, considering the fact that I loved my plot, but my characters just weren't talking to me). Either way, I scraped a 51,000 word win. Last year, I attempted a horror/comedy about demons and it was pretty fun for about three days until it all fell apart and I went back to writing some more of my 2012 novel (which, by the way, is now insanely long and still isn't finished). I don't even know, I attempted what us NaNo veterans call 'pantsing', which is when you don't have a plot and you only have like 3 characters but you write anyway without any clue what the heckie you're doing - it backfired on me because my plot had gone literally nowhere and I hated my characters. Ah well. I have 6.5k of random awfulness on my flash drive now.

THIS YEAR I'm continuing 'Constellation'! It's going to be my 3rd year doing a wip, although this is the first time that I've gone into November intentionally continuing a story (oops), so I'm half rebelling. Last year, I did a continuation and got just under 60k done so THIS YEAR I WILL BEAT 60K! I WILL OR SO HELP ME, I'LL BE SO UNHAPPY WITH MYSELF I'm extremely competitive, as you can see, especially with myself.

SO YEAH it's doable, and what's more, it's even fun. The community on NaNo is the nicest, like legit they're so lovely and supportive all year round and I love them all. If this sounds like your idea of fun, PLEASE GO SIGN UP! Even if you don't 'win', we'll still love you and praise you :3 and please add me as a writing buddy because I want to be able to see your guys' novels.

BOOP!

-Xenexian