Writing 50,000 words in the span of one month sounds crazy to me. That means writing, on average, 1,667 words per day, which doesn’t sound daunting, but really is because I have to actually come up with 1,667 things to say every day.

Context? Yes, that might be helpful.

My Novel Idea

I have entered myself into the annual National Novel Writing Month contest, which begins on November 1. A friend of mine at work has done this a few times, and even published her own book out of one of her entries, so she invited me to give it a shot.

In preparation for this endeavor, I have been spending most of my creative energies on organizing and drafting this story, which is an entirely valid (read: convenient) excuse for the lack of content here on Red Strings in recent weeks.

The novel I will be writing is the first installment of a world-building project through which I want to explore various genres, writing styles, and narrative forms. This project has been in development, in some form, for seven years. It began with inspiration from a  World Civilizations course I took in college. I had loose, vague summaries written up for the communities of a small (geographically and creatively) fantasy world.

After losing and then reigniting my interest in these stories, I blew up what little I had and expanded this world massively, taking only minor ideas from the first iteration. Now, I have a geographical space that spans hundreds of thousands of square miles and a basic historical timeline that spans close to a millennium. I am also developing a mythology and colloquial dialects for this world.

The story itself is hard to pin down at this point. It’s alternate-universe fantasy, coming-of-age journey, political drama, and adventure story all wrapped up into one. I’ll provide details on this next week.

The Challenge

So, there it is: 50,000 words in 30 days. I don’t know how this will turn out. I don’t know if I will be able to write 50,000 words in one month, or even if the novel I end up writing will be that long. I don’t know exactly how I will go about getting said finished novel published, and I don’t know how long that process will take.

However, I know that this competition feels like a step forward in my lifelong goal to become a published author.

Ping me if you’re a fellow NaNoWriMo’er and want to connect! I’ll post weekly updates through November about my writing progress.

Steve D