Don’t know what NaNoWriMo is?

Huh. It’s National Novel Writing Month! It’s huge! It’s powerful! Oorah!

Why should you care? Do you love your authors? Well, believe it or not, every now and then, we need a major kick in the ass to write. Writing’s not as easy as we make it look. Sure, we crawl out of bed in our jammies, turn on our computers, and open a file. We’re “at work” in a minute. We take breaks when we want. Take our showers and get into our yoga pants when we want. We set our own schedules. Sounds like heaven, right?

That part is very, very nice. But…

Our brains have to be “on” when we open that document to begin writing. We have to have an idea. Have to be “in the zone” to create. And sometimes, that can be very, very hard. So, we need challenges to keep us motivated. To recreate the fun. To make us want to sit all day at our desk diving into our imaginary worlds.

That’s where NaNoWriMo comes in. Every November, some of us crazy writers join the international challenge that is NaNoWriMo. I’ve been doing this every November for a while. Everyone’s goal is to write 50,000 words in November to complete an entire novel. I cheat a bit, because invariably I have more than one project I have to work on. But I do commit to writing 50,000 words. Sometimes, I make it. Sometimes, I don’t. However, the point is renew my commitment to writing. 50,000 words sounds like a lot, but it’s really just 1,667 words a day for thirty days. That’s entirely doable.

I say that—like a mantra—out loud. So I’ll believe it. Here goes. 🙂

If any of you writers out there want to join me, my NaNoWriMo handle is “DelilahDevlin”—add me as a friend and I’ll add you!

Reader friends, you can help by giving the occasional “attagirl”. Be thinking about me—pounding away at my keyboard, wearing my jammies, and drinking endless mugs of coffee… And yes, that’s me this morning, sans makeup and feeling groggy after an evening of Trick-or-Treating with five kids. But I’m at my desk and ready to go!

So, tell me. Is there any annual challenge you give yourself that’s like this? Something big and powerful?