I’ve spent a lot of time this year working on the novel project (which finally got to a zero-draft by the end of October! Hooray!), so I decided early on to try writing short stories for NANOWRIMO this year. I’ve got a big backlist of short story ideas I’ve wanted to tackle, but telling myself that I’d hold onto them until November helped me stay on task with the book.
I have no idea why I thought I could write 1667 words a day when I can barely scrape out a couple minutes here and there, but yesterday went well! I wrote 1481 yesterday, all in the evening after everyone else went to bed. I think that’s got to be my golden hour for the time being. Everybody else goes to bed around 10:30-11, and if I stay up after that, the house is quiet and I can really focus. It has the added benefit of allowing me to keep going if the words are flowing, which other, shorter sprints don’t always allow during the day.
November may end up being a month of little sleep, but I’m hoping to come out of it with a fistful of short fiction drafts I can work on next year. We’ll see if that ends up happening, but I’m cautiously optimistic!
So if you’re curious to see how this NANO is going, check back here! I’ll be trying to post a note daily (or semi-daily) on progress.
CURRENT PROJECT: An Unremarkable Talent
Genre: Ghost/Lit/Curio Fiction
NANO Word Count Total: 1481
Maggie Slater 