NaNoWriMo* begins on Wednesday. I will not be committing to the challenge this year, or to an alternate challenge, as I have sometimes done.
*For any of you who are unfamiliar with the term, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It's an annual challenge that encourages anyone who wants to to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's actually not as hard as it sounds.
In 2009, 2010, and 2011, I committed to the challenge - and I have 3 partial novels that I still have not finished. The last thing I need to do is to begin a FOURTH novel that will take me 8 years to finish.
There were a few years that I selected alternate challenges; one was that I would write something - anything - each day for 30 days. Some of these were writing prompts. Some of them just came to me. One of these stories, "Scarlet," has been published. There was another year that I chose to spend each week of November workshopping a different short story. The result of that challenge is another soon-to-be published story, "Ashes."
Last year, because I had a lot on my plate, and was also dealing with what my doctor calls "situational anxiety," I decided not to set any goals or commit to any challenges, to give myself a much needed mental break.
This year, I'm going for something in between. I have a lot I'm currently trying to sort out and deal with (not the same level of stress as last year, just post wedding logistics that are taking a while and must be done), so I do not want to set a goal for that reason. I will, however, work on a project.
This NaNoWriMo, I am picking back up on my first NaNoWriMo project - the Wolf and the Sheath. Wolf and Sheath currently stands at 81 pages/just under 50,000 words (the document has been through several computer upgrades and it seems each new version of Word calculates the word count of this piece slightly differently). I have been working on rereading, starting on on some pre-planning, making to-do lists, etc. for this piece off and on over the last couple months. This November, I am going to sit down and start making some meaningful edits, write new content, and generally start cleaning up and improving a document that is good, but can also be a lot better. (I have honed my craft a lot in the past 8 years.)
Don't expect to see updated posts on word counts, like I did in November of 2015. Since this will be a combination of researching, editing, rearranging, and writing, there may not necessarily be tangible milestones to post about. But I will pots an update late in November or early in December as to what progress I've made on the piece, and will continue to post about W&S as I workshop it for the next few months.