Thoughts on November Writing Challenges: My Plans for a Wordy November

November has become the month when writers gather to take on BIG writing challenges. And for the first time in recent years, I’m joining in.

Back in the days of the now defunct (it’s a long story; I won’t bore you) NaNoWriMo (aka, National Novel Writing Month), I undertook the major writing challenge many Novembers. If you don’t know, you set a goal of writing 50,000 words in the month of November. Of the eight times I participated, I “won” five times. NaNoWriMo had a great website where you could chat and sprint with other writers and share your progress.

After they folded (long story; see above), many alternatives stepped in to fill the gap. My favorite is Sarra Cannon’s Rough Draft Challenge—she has an amazing community and a trillion videos on YouTube to help you prepare in October (Preptober, as it is known) and then during the month of November, there are community events and sprints. It’s fabulous. I will definitely be jumping in on those. There is something really encouraging and ballasting about the collective energy of many people taking on the same challenge simultaneously.

This year I’m also participating in The Reedsy Novel Sprint. Here’s the quick and dirty: you write 50,000 fresh words into their novel-writing platform, Reedsy Studio, in November. During the month there will be live events and sprints and in the end there will be potential prizes! And if nothing else, my word count will be all the chunkier for the effort.

It has been a long while since I challenged myself in this way and when I got the email from Reedsy detailing their challenge, I experienced an immediate full-body YES!

Read the full post on my Substack!