Halloween has just come to an end, and we all know what that means...

It's National Novel Writing Month!

Some of you have probably heard about National Novel Writing Month before, better known as NaNoWriMo. It is a program that encourages aspiring writers of all ages to try writing a novel all within the month of November. It sounds intimidating, but it is meant to be for fun and for practice! NaNoWriMo also offers different opportunities for writers, such as scholarships, publishing deals, and cover creators. Even if you don’t aim for the gold and try to seize all of those opportunities, it is still worth a try. How many people can say they have written a novel in a month?

I love NaNoWriMo because it can help people develop their writing style and play around with ideas they’ve had in their head. The community is absolutely lovely, too! There are many participants who like to communicate with other creators and talk about their stories, and there are more renowned, professional authors reaching out to give tips throughout the month. It’s a lovely program that I would recommend to many people, although I have only managed to participate once myself.

The first and sadly last time I set out to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge was in 7th grade, when my gifted program teacher made it into an assignment. I ended up writing a book called “Death Diary,” which was a mystery/horror formatted as a series of diary entries in a haunted diary. I don’t remember much about the story other than it eventually bringing misfortune and death upon the owner, and the main protagonist trying to destroy the diary in the end. Oh, and the protagonist had 3 dogs and a chinchilla. I am sure that the poor story is lost in time somewhere, but it reached roughly 24,000 words, which is still a pretty cool feat for a 7th grader! I have wanted to participate again ever since, but every year I manage to get overwhelmed or lose track of time and end up not writing. Also, I am someone who can review and edit the same story every day and make changes without progressing, which is bad when you have to flesh out and actually write out a whole story in a month. That hasn’t stopped me from coming up with ideas, though!

I say this every year, but I am getting the itch to try it out. Yeah, we're about a week into the month (as this is being posted) and I am already consumed with a college workload, but I have some tricks up my sleeve that have been waiting to come out. It can't hurt to try!

Throughout the month of November, I want to talk about my experience of writing a novel in a month. Maybe I'll mention tips or cool opportunities happening, or maybe I'll post snippets that I've written. Who knows! We'll just have to wait and see.

If any of you are taking on the NaNoWriMo challenge, please feel free to share your experiences! I would love to hear about your work in progress or anything else you might have to add.