By Raymond Tyler
I have participated every year for the past 5 years in NaNoWriMo. What exactly is NaNoWriMo? For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo means National Novel Writing Month that falls every November for the entire month. The goal is to write 50,000 words towards a new novel in thirty days. The month of November has become the standard bearer because it conveniently has thirty days and for kicking off the holiday season.
Writing 50,000 words is no small feat. If you divide the total amount of words by thirty, you get 1,667 words per day that need to come from your brain through your fingers either on good old-fashioned paper or typed onto a typewriter or a computer screen. What it boils down to is caffeine-fueled nights with either energy drinks or some very strong coffee that percolates the brain and fuels the written muse.
50,000 words may seem like a lot and it is, but it’s still not technically novel length; more like a novella length. The average length of a novel is between 70,000 words on the shorter end and 120,000 words. Just for context: the first Harry Potter novel clocked in at just under 75,000 words. Publishers start getting a little hairy about books that are written over 100,000 because of printing costs and the simple economics of cost to benefit ratio. So, unless your name is a very proven one like Stephen King or JK Rowling few publishers are apt to publish stuff over 100,000.
Anyways, this is not supposed to be a treatise on how to get published, but just a reminder that NaNoWriMo gets a person started, but it is up to each writer to find that internal strength to finish the story that was started and see their written baby to completion.
I have focused each year that I have participated in NaNoWriMo on a different story. This year’s story is called, “The Prisoner” and is actually a sequel to a previous year’s NaNoWriMo from 2015 called, “The Freshman.” I don’t plan on going into too much detail about the first book, but rather focusing on this year’s story.
The Prisoner is a work in progress. In November, I got almost 60,000 words written. I gutted more than half of what I had written in the first week of December in editing, and as of this writing on Christmas Eve, I am at just over 30,000 words. So far this month, I have written around 10,000 words, but by the time that I finish, I see the book clocking in at between 70,000-100,000 words.
My goal is include excerpts of recently written portions to drum up interest in the book before I began shopping it to different publishing companies and book agents.
