As a part of the NaNoWriMo challenge.
Tomorrow is the 1st of November. All around the world, thousands of people will glue to their laptops, writing a novel.
They will write 50,000 words in 30 days.
That is 1,667 words a day.
This annual event is known as NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.
Each year, I take part in the challenge. I have been doing that since I found out about it in 2011.
Sometimes I win it, other times I don’t.
Winning means writing 50,000 words before the clock strikes midnight on 30th November.
Many times, I manage only a few thousand words. But I participate each year, regardless. The only exceptions are when I am traveling in November. However, twice I wrote during the travel. It killed me and ruined all the fun, so I decided not to do that again.
In NaNoWriMo terms, I am a rebel writer.
Which means I write things other than a novel.
In 2011, I wrote a short story and managed to write only 2,340 words.
In 2012, I wrote my memoir and wrote 13,458 words towards it.
In 2013, I wrote a collection of short stories and won the challenge.
In 2015, I wrote the first draft of my first novel and won it again by writing 52,504 words.
In 2016, I wrote a travel memoir and cranked up 40,516 words.
In 2017, I wrote 14,169 words in diary-style personal writing.
In 2018, I wrote 55,757 words long self-help book and won it again.
In 2019, I wrote a collection of blog articles (15,437 words).
In 2020, I wrote the draft of my second novel (17,370 words).
In 2021, I wrote a memoir again, Diary of A Wannabe Writer (16,670 words)
This year, I am planning to finish the first novel I wrote in 2015 and get it ready for publication.
But somehow that doesn’t bring in the excitement of a challenge.
So I want to up the ante, and write another book in parallel.
In public.
On LinkedIn and Medium.
Starting tomorrow.
If I have intrigued you enough and you too want to write a novel or a book in November, you can join NaNoWriMo here.
I am going to need all your encouragement and support.
An online friend on LinkedIn wrote, “You have taken on quite a challenge there.” My response was, “The worst that can happen is I fail. But I will fail doing something. Which is not a failure but a step forward. I will learn from my mistake and do it better next time.”
I have changed my relationship with failure.
I don’t see them as failures anymore. I see them as opportunities to learn.
Back in 1993, I started a business. Selling artificial jewelry. I failed at it miserably.
Then again, in 2001. This time in health supplements. I failed again.
Then I tried my hand at selling real estate, in the middle of the worst recession Australia had ever experienced. Needless to say, I didn’t sell a single house. I had failed again.
Now, thirty years later, when I look back at them, they were not failures; they were learning opportunities.
I learned more from my failures than from my successes. “Writing” was my biggest failure. In my first performance review as a middle manager, my boss said to me, “The only thing standing between you and a senior manager role is your written English.”
Bingo!
A learning opportunity!
I rolled up my sleeves and got on with turning my weakness into a strength.
– I enrolled in writing courses.
– Joined writing groups.
– Started a blog.
– Read books.
– Then wrote some.
Today, when someone says to me, “You write very well,” I smile. I tell them it is because I am not afraid of failures.
The next 30 days will show whether I fail again and learn some lessons. Or able to use what I learned about writing in the past 3–4 years and write a book in public.
I do crazy things like these now and then.
If you have been following me for a while, you would know that back in January 2021, I posted on three social media platforms for 100 consecutive days.
Then again in April 2021, I announced that I will write 100 articles in 100 days. And I did that too.
Then, in June 2021, I set myself a challenge to write a book in a week and I did that too. I even wrote an update each day, sharing my progress.
This is something like that.
A challenge to push the boundaries and do some more under pressure.
I have been trying to talk myself out of it but the idea won’t leave me. So I am going to go ahead and do it.
What is my plan?
My plan is to fictionalize a non-fiction book.
It is going to be an interesting idea, and I am very excited about it. At least for the time being. I can’t say whether this excitement will last for the entire month.
I will not chase the 50,000 words (I am a rebel writer, after all). Instead, I am going to weave a story around the messages I want to get across. If I could do that convincingly, the skeleton will be done and the book can be beefed up in subsequent edits.
When I announced this crazy idea on LinkedIn, I didn’t realize that LinkedIn posts have a limit of 3000 characters (which is about 500–600 words). So my plan is to write an abridged version on LinkedIn and a full version on Medium. I hope it will work.
From experience, I know there will be days in the month when I cannot write. Such days come, we all know that, so I am giving myself permission to skip a few days here and there and make up for them when I can.
To save you from a flood of emails, I will publish the daily chapters in my profile and will give you updates from time to time, along with the links.
As I am writing these words, my inner critic is lifting its head and before he talks me out of sending this post, I am going to hit publish.
See you tomorrow!
Bye for now.
