For those of you who don’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month and the goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. That equates to 1,667 words a day for 30 days.

In 2013, I entered NaNoWriMo with a half-baked idea for a novel about 14-year old twins who wake up one morning after camping in the woods to discover they’ve somehow been transported to an alternate world full of elves and dwarves. I sat down on November 1 and banged out 1,667 words and then proceeded to write not a single additional word for the rest of the month.

After eventually writing more of that story, I tabled it in favor of a new idea. I managed about 10,000 words over several months before tabling that one too.

Then in January 2015, an idea for a piece of flash fiction popped into my head: what if there was a section on Craigslist that listed quests like those you might find in World of Warcraft and similar games?

The words flowed quickly from my brain to the keyboard and in an hour, I had a nifty little story about an unnamed person’s first five quests. I submitted it to a bunch of sites for publication and was promptly rejected. A few months later, I decided to expand the story. Who was this person? What was the purpose of these quests? I slowly built the story and character, writing in spurts whenever I had the time. I started writing new chapters monthly to send out to a small newsletter I had started, came up with a name for the story, and eventually finished the final part of what would be a decent-size novella in the summer of 2016. Then I printed out the whole thing for some rigorous editing with the goal of getting it out by the beginning of 2017.

But then the manuscript sat on my nightstand for months. Every time I thought of picking it up, something stopped me.

Flash forward to October 2017. I had written a few more chapters but never could get any momentum going. I kept finding new things to read about how to write, how to market, or how to build a following, and I would think about how great it would be once I’d done all those things, but then the writing part never happened.

Throughout October, I received numerous emails urging me to sign up for NaNoWriMo, which I promptly deleted. I knew that I would never be able to write 50,000 words in a month and juggle work and family, so what was the point?

Then, on the last day of the month, I decided to just go for it. I set a goal of writing something every day, even if I didn’t make it to 1,667 words/day.

So did I make it to 50,000 words?

Not even close.

I didn’t even hit 1,667 words in a single day.

Instead, more importantly, I reached my goal of writing every single day, even if it was just 50 words, something I’d never been able to do before. And that has paid dividends that have compounded.

Being forced to write on my phone for a few minutes at a time on the subway or in the elevator  showed me that I could write anywhere, even on my phone. It also shattered the presumption in my mind that everything needed to be perfect for the words to start flowing.

It also made me stop my internal editor, so I could get out the next sentence and the one after that, and the one after that, rather than fussing with word choice or phrasing. If I didn’t have an idea for a character’s name or a place or even a way to get from point A to point B, I just put in a placeholder to come back to later.

Finally, it made me get the story of my head. I had spent lots of time thinking about the different ways the story could develop, but those ideas always stayed in the ether and the story remained stalled on the page.

With the spark from NaNoWriMo 2017, I went on to finish that first novella, wrote a second one in summer of 2018, then tried (and failed) to write the entire third novella last November while revising the second novella. But I kept at it this winter, establishing new daily routines, and finally finished the third part of what is now a full-length novel called Guild of Tokens, which I released this past June.

As I write this, it’s October 31, and I’m about 8,500 words into book 2, Guild of Magic. I’ve got a rough outline, my favorite table at the coffee shop reserved for the entire month (I wish), and a goal of doubling my previous NaNoWriMo effort.

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo too, add me as a buddy, and let’s get to work!