Sometimes you simply need a kick in the butt to get some things done (I often need multiple kicks). This month, I’ve gotten that kick from Kosmo at The Soap Boxers. He’s writing a novel this month (or at least trying to). He’s not alone. Thousands of people are joining him as part of National Novel Writing Month, which goes by NaNoWriMo (it’s more fun to say aloud than to read to yourself). The challenge is to write, write, write putting together 50,000 words in the month. For non-mathy types, that’s around 1,666 words a day.
I’m doing NaNoWriMo, but I’m going to do it Bloggy Style (yes I stole that from Kosmo). Maybe it’s more accurately called NaBloWriMo. I’ll be trying to complete 50,000 words, but I’ll be spreading them out over many blog posts. My average blog post is around 500 words, so that’s 100 blog posts for the month. I typically write somewhere between 15 and 20 posts a month. That’s a lot more writing than I’m used to. To make matters more complicated, I have that newborn baby and another big life change that I hope to share next week.
You won’t be seeing a hundred posts on Lazy Man and Money this month. I’ll be writing for other blogs I maintain like MLM Myth. Also, since there’s no publishing requirement with NaNoWriMo, I’ll be writing some articles that will be published in the future. In the end, this challenge is going to be on the honor system.
What does this have to do with personal finance or money? I’m expecting that by forcing myself to write more I’ll become a better writer. And if I’m a better writer, that should translate to more money.
For Microsoft Excel dorks like me out there, this post has a bit of circular reference in it. The more words that I write for this post the closer I get towards my goal. I’ve got 375 words done and only 49,625 left to go.
I’ll leave you with a joke. What does a fiction writer and an MLM distributor have in common? They both attempt to profit by spreading elaborate lies. A hat tip to Kosmo pointing this out about fiction writers (the MLM distributor part was my own creation).
if you enjoy nanowrimo, you should try napowrimo in april [national poetry writing month: 30 poems in 30 days] or script frenzy in april. btw i’m a nationally published fiction writer: i’ma tax accountant!
I’m not much of a poetry person. I could probably stitch together 30 Haikus in a few days.
I look forward to reading your posts!
I’m doing a similar kind of blogging challenge this month too! I really like how Nanowrimo has become bigger than itself – everyone I know seems to be doing *something* with writing targets this month, even if it isn’t a novel in the traditional sense.
I’m doing it too. In April, Arlee Bird of Tossing it Out does an alphabetical daily blogging challenge. You might look into that. It’s fun and you get a badge. :) Last year, some 700 bloggers took part.
My cousin is a published author of two novels so she pointed me towards the NaNoWriMo site. I was on pace for about two weeks and then real business, Thanksgiving and two kids slowed me down. I ended at around 30,000 words. The good news is that I will finish by year end and am already working on publishing avenues. Not sure if you made it to 50,000, but if nothing else I am sure it forced you to move at a faster pace than you might have.
Nope, I didn’t even get that close. Moving and the new baby, plus Thanksgiving slowed me down. If I can count responding to people’s comments though, I probably hit 50,000 with no problem.