Will You Be Participating in NaNoWriMo, an Annual Tradition, this November

When most people think about annual traditions in November here in the United States, Thanksgiving comes to mind. For me, the most significant tradition is NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and I participate almost every year. NaNoWriMo occurs every November from 12:01 am on November first until 11:59 pm on November 30 and millions participate all over the world. The objective of the event is to write 50,000 words of the first draft of your novel during the month.  Most years I win, although one year I didn’t and another year I didn’t participate at all, but NaNoWriMo has been significant in getting the first drafts of my novel written.

Most years, I write the first draft of one of my novels in the Locket Saga series. The series is a historical fiction story about a family where the bride inherits a locket to wear when she weds. Each story is about the courtship of the relationship of that novel. Because the book is about the ups and downs of one family member’s courtship, (for lack of a better word), each book in the series is independent of the other stories in the series. Several of the books in the series was started on NaNoWriMo.

 One year I wrote a story that was more contemporary, and it is still sitting in the drawer waiting for me to dust it off and bring it back to life. (I don’t know if that will happen.)

This year I am thinking about writing a book that has been in my head to add to the Locket Saga for many years now, and since before I published When God Turned His Head, but I still haven’t written it yet. The story idea is set during the discovery of oil in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Because it is considered unlucky to share too much of the plot at this point, I will let you know more about that later.

In the two months coming up to November, I will be working on certain aspects of the novel. These aspects include creating a summary of the book, adding character sketches to the series bible, the title, the outline for the book, doing research for the time of the book, and creating the rough draft blurb for the back of the book. I like to do as much of this as possible before writing the first draft because I like to have a working knowledge of what I want in my first draft before I write it. This saves a lot of the editing that I must do when I begin that process.

NaNoWriMo is an annual event that I don’t like to miss and I won’t this year either. Even though my son has his wedding this November, I can almost guarantee that I will have a successful win when I write the book. Are you participating NaNoWriMo this year?