Oh boy oh boy ohboyohboy it’s NOVEMBERRRR! If you’re in the writing world at all you’ll know the insane and fun challenge that takes place this month. National Novel Writing Month begins! What is NaNoWriMo, you ask? (come on, at least pretend you’re interested!) The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It doesn’t matter if they’re good words, crappy words, or the same scene written over and over again; as long as your total is at or over 50k on Nov 30 11:59pm, you’re a winner!

What do you win? Nothing! Well actually, that’s not really true. You’ll be able to buy winners merch without being a liar. You’ll get codes for discounted writing software and other writing-related subscriptions as well. You’ll also get bragging rights that will take more time to explain than it is to get an obligatory high-five.

A “perfect” NaNo is an entirely new story started and finished within the 50k and 30 days. The Nano I’m doing this year (and did last year) is adding onto an older project. My novel, The Syphon Stones: Aquamarine is the first in a YA fantasy trilogy. I’d love to add another 50k towards finishing it and starting book two! As long as I average over 1,700 words a day I’ll reach my goal. My current manuscript is sitting around 70k, but I believe I’m cutting over 7k from the beginning. This is after I already cut an earlier 20k. I needed those words to figure out my story, but once I had it figured out, that entire section became completely unnecessary. Yes, it sucked to do that, but I’m able to rework a lot of the early section into later parts of the plot.

If you’re doing NaNo, be my buddy on the website! My username is Inkfish. I’d love to find any other 90-day-ers out there doing it!

Come back tomorrow for a preview of the first chapter of my planned YA high fantasy trilogy! I’ll break down how i included world-building smoothly (at least I hope it’s smoothly) and built upon that skeleton while introducing the plot. It’s a lot to handle for any non-normal-world setting and is an exciting challenge if you’re up to it!