Back in September I wrote about the collapse of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organization and how writers are abandoning it like rats from a sinking ship.
Well, it’s November and that’s when writers do their annual 50K word writing challenge. I’ve participated in the NaNoWriMo challenge many times myself, even ‘winning’ a few times and writing 50K words in one month.
I feel the need to do a challenge because I’ve let my writing languish (again) and I really feel the need to get these stories out of my head. I’m hoping it will help calm down the mental churn I experience on a daily basis. And I need to get back into a writing habit. That is why I usually participated in NaNoWriMo, to get myself writing on a consistent basis. All these stories in my head aren’t going to write themselves. Well, they do write themselves, but they aren’t getting out of my head by themselves. I need to get them out and putting in the effort is the only way I know to do that.
I’d intended to do some prep work for my writing challenge during October. I did precious little prep work, letting client work and getting The Zombie Guide To Lawn Care out taking precedence instead. I did do a lot of cogitating, though, I just didn’t get any of it written down. Hopefully I won’t forget any of the ideas I had, but if I do forget them I guess they weren’t strong enough ideas to survive.
For this month I’m going to work on my Dungeons and Dragons gaming tropes inspired flash fiction tales. Much like the zombie tales I just finished, each tale will be five hundred (500) words long (or thereabouts) and will using gaming tropes as the inspiration. As usual, there will likely be a lot of humor in the tales, and maybe a few emotional zingers. They always seem to creep into my writing when I least expect it. My goal is to write ten of them, totaling five thousand (5000) words. I know how crazy my month is going to be so I’m looking at this as an achievable goal.
Since NaNoWriMo imploded I’m in need of a new tracker for this project. Okay, I don’t need a tracker but I like tools and so I want one to track my progress. There are plenty out there but I recently came across one that is in the same spirt as NaNoWriMo, but a little more freeform as well.
Writing Month is the spiritual successor to NaNoWriMo. Unlike NaNoWriMo, you can run a monthly project at any time of the year, not just November. You can also set your own word goal and aren’t limited to doing 50K words. I’m going to track my 5K word goal using the site. It doesn’t have very many features (yet) but it doesn’t really need a lot for my purposes. I’ll be interested in seeing what they add to it as it develops but it’s perfectly fine for my needs right now.
So, my Hordeling, join me if you like. I’d be interested in hearing about your writing project and its progress. Maybe you could start by writing one flash fiction story. Five hundred words isn’t that much to write. Or just follow along. I’ll be posting about my progress here as I go along. If you join Writing Month, let me know and add me (my username is jhusum). Only people you add can currently see your project’s progress on the Writing Month site. This may change in the future, depending on what they do with the site.
As Stan Lee used to say, “Excelsior!’
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum