“It’s late January,” you mutter. “What is she doing writing about National Novel Writing Month again?”
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Well, friends, I’m still writing about NaNoWriMo because, lo and behold, they have once again surpassed all my expectations an enabled writers across the globe to flourish in their own creativity. This organization never fails to amaze me, and here’s why:
For those of you who don’t know, National Novel Writing Month is a website dedicated to helping people write 50,000-word novels in the 30 days of November. Click here to read more about the site and its sub-sites, Camp NaNoWriMo and the Young Writer's Program.
Now what this group of talented and inspirational individuals has done is created a brand new website feature for the use of writers everywhere: the Goal Tracker.
This little doo-dah of a tab on the Author page holds incredible power. It takes the concept of NaNoWriMo out of November—and out of April and July—and transposes it atop any time of the year. No particular month, no time limits, no creativity limits, no restrictions whatsoever. It is a word-or-hour counter built into your NaNo profile to help you keep track of your creative projects throughout the entire year.
>insert dramatic gasp<
For NaNo writers everywhere, it’s a dream come true.
When you create a new Goal Tracker (and you can have many), you have the option to enter a work’s title and set specific dates for when you would like to complete your project:
Once created, the Goal Tracker supplies a gorgeous graph which keeps count of your words or hours and displays them for you, just like during a NaNo month:
…as you can see, I haven’t updated my novel since I created my first tracker, but to be fair, I’ve been writing other things since the month began. And besides—you can see from the screenshot that I have tailored the Goal Tracker to my needs.
For example, I want my November novel to reach 100,000 words before April first, which is the beginning of the next Camp NaNo challenge. I’m starting where I left off in December—at approximately 67,000 words. The Goal Tracker allows me to manipulate my own guidelines to help me achieve the objective. In this manner, I have only my self-set restrictions to worry about. I have roughly 33,000 words to write in the span of three months. As someone accustomed to writing 50k in thirty days, this is a low-stress challenge.
In other words, I’m in full control.
If you haven’t guessed already, this is one of the most beautiful things anyone has done for writers who need more self-motivation between official challenge months. Not only can we adjust the parameters to suit daily life, but we can reap the same atmospheric incentive a normal NaNo month provides whenever we need it. Any month is a challenge month, now. If anything is going to help us crank out the words, it is this.
To close, I would like to thank NaNoWriMo (as I always do) for being some of the coolest people on the planet. I look forward to finishing my novel and harnessing the full power of my own motivation with the aid of the Goal Tracker. To writers everywhere: go make one now! When you can look back and see all you’ve done, you will celebrate.
