In March of 2013, my son hiked the Appalachian Trail. He took our 10-year-old dog, Copper, and set out on the adventure of a lifetime. Many of my readers know the story and followed his journey.<\/p>\n
He blogged while he was hiking and when he returned home, I encouraged him to take his blog and create a book for future generations to enjoy. He balked at first but knew that memories fade and that having the blog and pictures in printed form would be a treasure. He edited and rewrote sections of the blog with the result being a 700+ page hard bound book with memories and pictures documented forever. The creation of the book happened during Nanowrimo. For those who are unfamiliar with “Nano”, I will explain.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Each November, writers take on the task of writing 50,000 words in one month. This encourages authors, students, and novice writers to push themselves to write every day.<\/p>\n
As I watched other authors get excited this year, I decided to give it a shot. Fifty thousand words in 30 days. That’s only 1,667 words each day. I could do that. So, I signed up and proceeded to write. If I were successful, I would have another novel in hand in 30 days. Here are the stats from my first attempt at “Nano”.<\/p>\n
November 1st, I wrote 1666 words and was off to a great start!<\/p>\n
November 2nd, I wrote 3,133 words.<\/p>\n
November 3rd, I wrote 2,605 words.<\/p>\n
Things were looking good!<\/p>\n
Then, by November 19th, my entire word count was only 8,151.<\/p>\n
Today, November 30th, is the last day for the event and I’m an official “loser” with a total of 14,797 words in 30 days.\u00a0 Only 35,203 words short of the goal. Sigh! This nano thing is tougher than I thought.<\/p>\n
So, I’m not a winner and I can’t sport the Nanowrimo Winner T-shirt. ( Maybe I should be the entrepreneur and create the Nanowrimo LOSER shirt!)<\/p>\n
The good news is that it’s all about the journey with Nanowrimo and there are no losers. Writing is fun, therapeutic, healing, and yes, at times, stressful. But, I’m leaving November 2017 behind with my sights set on next year. Nanowrimo, I’m coming for you in 2018 and I’ll be sporting that WINNER T-shirt!<\/p>\n
Congratulations to all you Nanowrimo winners out there. I look forward to one day joining your club.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Featured Image is trademarked and copyrighted Nanowrimo 2017)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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