November is my favorite time of the year. The gorgeous fall colors, building leaf piles with my kids, celebrating my birthday and 30 whole days to focus on a first draft of a new book.Or maybe not a new book . . .
Sometimes I hit mid-October and even though I soo want to participate with my fellow NaNoWriMo companions, I am a good chunk into a current work in progress and don't want to set it aside. Or I'm deep into editing mode and just want to get that project finished so it can go out on submission. When I'm in this situation, I have a huge internal tug of war. To NaNo or not to NaNo???
The soluntion? NoNoWriMo.
I can't take credit for the awesomeness of NoNoWriMo. It was actually someone in one of my Authors Incognito writers group who came up with the idea. Each year, Authors Incognito puts together a fabulous database so we can track our NaNoWriMo progress. It's so cool to hit December 1st and see the amazing amount of words our group wrote! We do lots of sprints, prizes, and other fun activities to keep reaching for our 50K goals.
A few years ago, we had several group members who were already partway into a current work in progress or deep into edits, so we started a NoNoWriMo.
NoNoWriMo is when your goal doesn't fit into the official NaNoWriMo guidelines. For example, it could be an editing page count goal. In our Authors Incognito tracker, we added the option for participants to track the number of pages they edited and also to add comments on what they accomplished. It also let participants set more than one goal for the month. If someone finished edits and decided to work on outlining their next book, that became part of their NoNoWriMo challenge.
The best part is no one in the group missed out on the awesome energy we create in November. Those working on edits still participated in sprints, activities and reported their progress.
So, what are you working on this November? A NaNoWriMo or NoNoWriMo project?
