SheWriMo: Join the She Writes November Writing Challenge!

Well today is the day -- November 1st. What does that mean? For those of you participating in NaNoWriMo 2011, you know exactly what that means. It is time to get cracking on your attempt at writing a whole novel in just one month! I love NaNoWriMo (She Writer GRETCHEN RUBIN was the first to tell me about it, years ago, and I'm pretty sure her experience made it into The Happiness Project) mostly because of the energy, optimism and support it generates for writers. I do feel, however, that NaNo is not for everyone, and that what's best about it is not the notion that you will write a whole novel in a month (a draft, perhaps?), but the structure and goal-setting it encourages.

TAYARI JONES, in fact, expressed my feelings about NaNo beautifully last year in one of her Countdown To Publication posts for Silver Sparrow:

I like the idea of the month of November being devoted to novel writing. I love thinking of thousands of people sitting at their computers and notebooks thinking hard. What worries me is the idea that a novel should be finished at the end of that month. Let us devote November to novel writing, but let us focus more on trying to structure the month in such a way to be nurturing to our artist-selves. Maybe you will spend the month just daydreaming. Or someone else will hire a babysitter one afternoon a week to get some quiet time. Someone else will spend the month reading novels in translation. Yet another person may volunteer her month to reading friends' drafts. You get the idea. There is more to writing than just word count. Spend November being a more dedicated artist, whatever that looks like.

But while I love Tayari's idea of nurturing my artist-self in a variety of ways, I have to admit that for me, devoting November to writing every day seems like the best possible way to do it. So this month, I plan to push myself hard to make progress on the novel I'm working on. I certainly won't feel like I've failed if the whole book isn't done on November 30th, but I will feel like I've let myself down if I don't meet my personal goal of writing at least 1000 words (or more!) every day of the week.

With this in mind, I'd like to invite ALL She Writers, whether you are doing NaNoWriMo or writing fiction, nonfiction, blogposts, plays, screenplays, or poetry -- or even if you are working hard on your dissertation, like one academic I met yesterday -- to join me in what I'm calling SheWriMo, or the She Writes November Writing Challenge.

Every day, I will log on and share my writing goals for the day. At the end of the day, I will log back on and report on how I did. It's that simple. But when it comes to something as hard as writing, simple is good.

I hope you will join me today!

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Comment by Robin Hawke on December 2, 2011 at 1:34pm: So many people to be congratulated on Dec 1...NationalDanceOnANovelDay?

Comment by Suanne Schafer on November 30, 2011 at 10:59pm: Congratulations, Jennifer! It's good to see so many of us SheWrites women making our goals!!!

Comment by Marilyn Bostick on November 30, 2011 at 10:00pm: Yay Jennifer yay! Congratulations! Happy dance!

Comment by Marilyn Bostick on November 30, 2011 at 9:58pm: Peggy though you didn't do NaNo the writing you did do must have been satisfying. Congratulations on your successes!

Comment by Jennifer Turrell on November 30, 2011 at 9:36pm: Finished NaNoWriMo! Whew.

Comment by Peggy Bird on November 30, 2011 at 9:01pm: When I started this challenge I planned to turn notes-into-novel. Easy, right? Well, didn't happen. What did happen was that I thought of what I had to do to another novel to get it right to submit to an e-publisher and got it done, submitting it today. I got 15K words of a novella written and the rest outlined. And the notes-to-novel got about 15k into being. Oh, and for the program I volunteer for, I wrote 4 public service announcements and rewrote a script. Not 50k words. Not my new novel. But some of the most intense writing in a long time. It worked.

Comment by Robin Hawke on November 28, 2011 at 7:27pm: Go Michele!

Comment by Michele Tracy Berger on November 22, 2011 at 7:39am: My usual prompt writing class has been canceled do to the holiday. I'm still going to devote that 1-1/2 hour to writing even though my house is messy and I feel unorganized. I have short stories and a novel to work on!

Comment by Debbie Pokornik on November 18, 2011 at 7:21am: Yeah! There are people here still - I just knew I wasn't all alone! Yesterday I wrote a follow-up article about Positive Procrastination because I truly believe that sometimes what feels like loss of focus can actually be your intuition guiding you in an effort to help you engage both sides of the brain. If you have time (perhaps you're procrastinating) and want to check it out here's the lead in article http://bit.ly/uPnVhG the tips page is the very next blog in case you want to go straight there. Today I'm out most of the day & evening, so I'm going to do my writing tomorrow which works because I normally take the weekend off. That's why I love being my own boss - I'm so understanding. Have a great weekend everyone.