Not sure which? Try and write a short story-two pages max. If you’re thinking about participating this year, darlings, or you’ve already decided, I wish you the very best of luck! Here’s a few tips and tricks I’ve learned:Īre you a plotter or a pantser? Figure out before November 1 st whether you prefer a detailed outline, or like to fly by the seat of your pants. You dare yourself try something new, and to rush headlong into it, consequences be damned. I pick the plot I’ve had floating in the back of my mind but haven’t had the guts or the focus to put on paper. I explore ideas I shy away from touching in my “normal” writing.

Now I use NaNoWriMo to challenge what I write. That I had 50,000 words in me-even if they wound up being nonsensical. The first year I wanted to prove that I could write a novel, full-stop. It’s still daunting and thrilling every time, but I have different goals. Now that I write professionally year-round, NaNoWriMo has changed for me. I haven’t participated in NaNoWriMo every year, and I’ve only successfully completed the challenge twice-in 2007 and again in 2015. The fourth one, The Better to Kiss You With, was published in April 2016, and the fifth, a sequel titled Huntsmen was released in 2017. Since that first November in 2007 I’ve written five novels. It was a disaster, and I loved every second of it. My main character changed appearance, careers, and I’m pretty sure names, at least three times throughout. I don’t remember how I found out about NaNoWriMo-presumably the Internet-but I tracked down the official NaNoWriMo guide and found a friend to participate with me. Writing a book was a thing I would do in the future, when I’d figured out my life.

I’d dream and joke with friends about becoming an author one day, but it always felt like that-one day. I’d always enjoyed creative writing, but had never written anything longer than ten pages (double spaced!). My part-time retail job became a full-time retail job, and as the days grew shorter, the wind chillier, I started to despair that I would be stuck in that in-between, uncertain place forever.īooks were my one retreat, and reading on my breaks at work kept me sane. My first year in university had been miserable, and dangerously close to flunking out I decided to take the next one off. The first time I participated in National Novel Writing Month-AKA NaNoWriMo-I was nineteen years old, and had no idea where my life was going.

Huntsmen by Michelle Osgood