My NaNoWriMo Writing Goals | Writing Update #1

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that every November writers disappear into their stories. And I am no different! 2022 marks my sixth year of participating in NaNoWriMo and November is regularly one of my favourite months because of it. I don’t talk about my writing all that much on the blog but I want to change that. So today, I’m telling you all about my personal NaNoWriMo writing goals. Let’s get into it!

What is NaNoWriMo?

Lay, what the hell is a NaNoWriMo? Well, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and honestly, the name says almost everything you need to know. Every November, writers across the world come together for this annual event and work on their stories. The “official” NaNoWriMo goal is to write 50.000 words of a new draft, but many writers continue working on a draft, edit, or choose different word counts.

Overall, NaNoWriMo is a wonderful event in the writing community because we’re all excited about our stories and can share our joy and struggles. The official NaNoWriMo website also has a very fun stats page that I find incredibly motivating.

If you’re also participating in NaNoWriMo or just decided to give it a try, you can be my buddy on the website and we can cheer each other on!

You can find the other posts in this series here:

• Space Cities, a Mystery, and Unexpected Discoveries | NaNoWriMo Writing Update #2
• Connecting Threads and Creating Joy | NaNoWriMo Writing Update #3
• The Soggy Middle | NaNoWriMo Writing Update #4

What Project Am I Working On?

As I have done every year, I am starting a brand new project! Yes, I have projects that I planned and failed to work on during the year. But letting myself explore a new story is incredibly fun for me so I continue to do it every year.

My NaNoWriMo 2022 project is a sci-fi novel currently titled Nothing Here Worth Dying For. Because I am a chronic pantser, I actually don’t know very much about it yet. But hopefully, it’ll be about the vastness of space, the existential loneliness of humanity, and also nuclear semiotics. Realistically, it’s me having fun with sci-fi world-building and writing a sapphic main character because of course I am.

What Are My Nanowrimo Writing Goals?

Let’s chat about my goals for NaNoWriMo! They are as follows

1. Write 50k words, duh!
2. have those be 50k words of scenes and world-building (not me talking to myself)
3. work on creating an outline (because I am bad at it)
4. focus on dialogue and action (two areas I feel I am weak in)
5. have fun!

Outside of the regular 50k goal, I like to pick a personal writing goal. Usually, these goals tend to be craft related and this year is no exception! I want to use this writing project to practice writing dialogue and action and ideally have a lot of fun doing it.

I also anticipate learning quite a lot about my plotting process because I’ll have to continue working on the macro level of my story as the month progresses.

What Strategies Am I Using to Achieve These Goals?

Behind every goal is a strategy, or at least I try to have one. Having done this five times already, I consider myself a seasoned enough NaNoWriMoer to know how I work best. If you’re interested to hear me talk more in-depth about my writing tools and process, please let me know! But here are the basic elements of how I’ll very likely write my 50k words of sci-fi chaos:

• establish a writing routine to get me in the zone
• use my collection of craft books and digital resources (including but not limited to Maggie Stiefvater’s writing seminar, Save the Cat and the accompanying video courses, and good old YouTube)
• schedule both time for outlining and the actual daily writing
• pick a good writing soundtrack and have plenty of snacks, this is very important.
• inform the people in my life that I’m doing this! Both to get support and so that they know that if I don’t respond to messages immediately, it’s probably because I’m busy thinking about the intricacies of space cities.

Hopes, Dreams, and Predictions

Despite my witchy inclinations, I cannot predict the future. I do however know myself well enough to make an educated guess as to how this month is going to go. I am very confident I’ll be able to write 50k words. They won’t be good words or form a coherent narrative, but that’s okay.

While I do want to work on my writing craft and would love to one day have this story be a book-shaped thing, my primary hope for NaNoWriMo is always to have fun! Yes, I will be crying over scenes that don’t work and words that won’t flow, but at the end of the day I’ll also get to play around in a world of my own creation. That’s pretty exciting!

I hope that at the end of the month, I have a document with 50k words (or more!) in it and an outline of my story to go along with it. Basically, I hope that I’ll figure out what the hell this story is. Because right now it barely has a beginning.

The absolute dream (and very unlikely scenario) would be to somehow have a full outline and manage to write a full draft hitting all those points. I’ve managed that once before, during NaNoWriMo 2019, but it was a much simpler story so I don’t know how well it’s gonna go for this project.

Weekly Writing Updates

Those are my personal NaNoWriMo writing goals! Because I don’t know how much reading I’ll be able to do this month, I’ll turn my Weekly Reading Update into a Weekly Writing Update. Every Monday, you can expect a post with a progress report. I’ll share my word count, any struggles I faced and maybe I’ll even let you enjoy some fun snippets. I’m excited to get into this story!

As always, I’ll be sharing daily updates on my Twitter and Instagram, so follow me there for a closer behind the scenes look!

Let’s Chat!

📚 Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? If so, I’d love to hear about the project you’re working on!

📚 Do you have any personal NaNoWriMo writing goals outside of the 50k word count goal?

Good luck to all of you, I hope we have an amazing November!

I hope you have a lovely day,

If you like my work and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee!