Today is December 5th, 2019 and NaNoWriMo has long been over, but my brain had turned to mush. My original plan was to have this written and published by December 1st, but alas here I am.

If you can’t tell by the extra-large photo posted above, I was a winner! I wrote 50,026 words by November 27th. Sadly I was at the office as I typed the winning words so I had to keep my excitement to a minimum, but a feeling of euphoria washed over me as I completed another writing challenge.

Just in case you are unaware, NaNoWriMo stands for, National Novel Writing Month. A month where the goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. (If you have no idea what NaNo is all about, I wrote up a nice blog about NaNoWriMo: A History https://reneeschnebelin.com/if-you-write-it-it-will-be-read-by-someone-right/ )

The intention of this post is to go over some of the pros and cons of feverishly writing 50,000 words over the course of 30 days and why anyone would ever want to try. (If you had asked me a year ago if I wanted to write 50,000 words in November I would have most likely just laughed and may have called you crazy!) So much has changed.

Pros:

1. The NaNoWriMo Website: http://nanwrimo.org is a truly amazing website that has an engaging community of authors, aspiring authors, and readers alike. You get to create a page to track your project’s progress, participate in forum chat, and meet others (buddies) who are also attempting to write 50,000 words.
2. If you are successful, at the end of 30 days you will have 50,000 words that may have completed the first draft of a novel. (If you are working on a fantasy novel such as myself, 50,000 words isn’t nearly enough to have a completed first draft, but whatever. Close enough.)
3. You will get to meet some amazing writers along the way who will cheer you on and offer up advice when you find yourself in a plot hole. (I found myself digging out of many holes.)
4. You get an amazing certificate (see above) that you can proudly frame and then display for all to see.
5. In the end, it’s an experience like no other. And writer or not it is something that everyone should try at least once.

Cons:

1. If you work a full-time job, such as myself, you will have very little time to focus on anything (and I mean anything) else.
2. Getting up super early to reach daily word counts was exhausting.
3. By day 25 your brain will be completely offline.
4. You will now have 50,000 plus words that will most likely require a complete re-write. Unless you write like Mr. King (I do not).

In my opinion, the pros outweigh the cons. I now have two almost complete first drafts; which I know will require rewrites, but hey if I hadn’t participated I am 100% positive I would still be working on my first project and most likely nowhere near a complete draft.

So if you find yourself wanting to try a new skill, or maybe you are a writer working on a project and have found yourself stuck on the 15,000th word for weeks, then you may want to take a stab at NaNoWriMo. You don’t have to participate in November, you can pick any month that you wish. I know come July 2020 I will be partaking in Camp NaNoWriMo. I need some bunkmates…

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Leave a comment below and let me know if you will be joining me in July for Camp NaNo. Cheers!