It’s November 30th and the last day of the National Novel Writing Month challenge – where writers compete against themselves to write 50,000 words in thirty day. I have done it every year since 2013, but last year, for various reasons, I gave up after only a week. It was the time of my writing block, if you want to call it that, more of a stumbling block maybe, but I knew I couldn’t rise to the challenge, so bowed out. I really didn’t think I would make it this time, but somehow I managed to keep to a steady pace and it’s only over the last couple of days I’ve had to push up the word count and thank goodness I finished well in time!
Why do I do it, why do I take a challenge which needs such commitment – I guess because I need a push sometimes, it’s actually quite fun, and I end up with more words than I would normally have in a month. The only disappointment is that the site has been updated, and to be honest it was a bit creaky, but it has lost a lot of the friendliness that I found in previous years, or maybe I didn’t manage to find the right gang of writing chums.
Here are my results from the past eight years – 2014 was a brilliant year, I set myself some extra challenges and met them all:
- Unknown Destination – mystery, 50,036, Nov. 2020
- Who Do You Think I Am – mystery/genealogical mystery, 10,179, Nov. 2019
- Winterdyke* – thriller/suspense, 62,015 Nov. 2018
- Milla – mainstream, 50,470 Nov. 2017
- And The River – mainstream, 51,282 Nov. 2016
- Earthquake* – mystery, 53,030, Nov. 2015
- Raddy and Syl* – genealogical mystery, 50,092, Nov. 2014
- Magick and the Photo Box* – mainstream, 50,071, Jul. 2014
- Cooking the Books – genealogical mystery, 50,125, Apr. 2014
- Radwinter* – genealogical mystery, 73,026, Nov 2013
Wow! That adds up to 500,326 words!!! Of those, the ones I have asterisked above have become actual books which you can find on Amazon (Magick and the Photo Box became just Magick)
Great, congratulations Lois! Will we see this years story come out as a novel?
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Not sure on this one, it seems formless and rather dull at the moment… it will need a lot of work and I do have my 1950’s story to finish!
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Well done. That’s a phenomenal amount of writing. I’ve just finished Beyond Hope btw and it’s fabulous
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Oh thanks so much!!
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