Photo by Rainer Tenhunen.

For those who’ve never heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), it’s simple: NaNoWriMo is a free event where participants try to complete 50,000 words of a novel in one calendar month (November).

I’m doing it this year, and I’m excited. Even though I already write professionally, it’s too easy to get swept up in immediately gratifying projects like paying freelance work and blogging, and thus avoid the long-term slog of writing a book. In the words of Tom Spurgeon:

There is, however, a distressing trend culture-wide for a lot of people to aim low, to be perfectly satisfied with delighting the 40 people that follow you closely on Facebook with your clever remarks as opposed to finishing that novel. (link)

Pretty much.

My personal goal for NaNoWriMo is 1000 words a day, for a final word count of 30,000. If I hit 50,000, so much the better, but I’ll be satisfied with the lower number (I’m not a wordy writer, and have a Thanksgiving road trip and other paying & side writing projects coming up). Also, while blogging here will continue as usual, and I won’t bore you with novel updates, I will be posting writing inspiration & advice each Monday.

So…are you doing NaNoWriMo this year?