Challenge Week ~ A Week of Nano...

Today is the beginning of NANOWRIMO, National Novel Writing Month, an event that comes every November. Writer's from all over the world, of all shapes and sizes challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I successfully completed Two Sides Of Wilde in 2009 during NANO and this year I'm back for more!

Two Sides Of Wilde, available on Kindle by Amazon, is the first in the three part Wilde Series, but all three books can also stand alone.

Since this blog is meant to be a week long challenge, I'll measure out the equivalent. I am actually attempting to write TWO books during NANO and I'd like them to be 60,000 words or more. Not trying to be an over achiever, but I am very motivated by deadlines and accountability, so I'm just getting the most bang for my buck! Just a pun, NANO costs nothing!

My two titles are The Vegan & the Butcher and How Long Has It Been?. Here is an excerpt from VB....

Gran was especially picky and interested in cuts of meat, an education that would prove useless to Charlie when she became a vegetarian and then a vegan in college, but Joe the butcher never held it against her. He always called her Charlotte, like her Gran did, a habit Charlie loved as much as she hated. Old Joe had always had a little crush on Gran, or at least Charlie thought so. Gran insisted repeatedly that he treated all his customers with the same attention and charm, but her granddaughter wasn’t buying it. Charlie smiled as she remembered the teasing that she and Gran had shared over the years. The memory and the parking lot of Jamacha Junction made her stop and realize that Gran was gone. She’d been having moments like this all day, all week really. It was hard to believe it had been a week since the phone rang, in her new apartment, cardboard boxes still strewn about and nothing but a shiny framed degree hanging on one wall.

And one from HLHB....

Ginny looked at her watch, wondering if Eric was up. He had an alarm, but always seemed to be up before it was. He would get up and brush his teeth and drink his coffee, in that order, all while watching CNN and read the paper. She wondered what he would tell the girls; probably very little. He had a special knack for being vague. But they would be uninterested anyway. As long as there was someone to drive them to school and listen to their chatter, they would immediately be insisting on pizza delivery for dinner, which Eric would happily oblige. He wouldn’t check their homework and they would stay up too late. This would normally stir anxiety in Ginny when she traveled, but the reliability of it was actually a welcome comfort.

So, I'm a day late because I couldn't start til today (Tuesday, 11/1). Our blog challenge week ends on Friday (11/4). So, my goal being to write 4000 words a day, 2000 on each book (preferably,) but because the writing process is so unpredictable, I could finish one book and then the other, depending on the inspiration, so my four-day goal is 16,000 words total, by bedtime Friday.

It's not too late to participate in NANO at www.nanowrimo.org!! There's a great community there where you post your daily word counts and see how others are doing in your area.

At the end of the month, those who have finished get a free proof of their printed book from createspace.com.

So, wish me luck and be sure and post the challenges you have planned for yourself this week. Come back and post your progress. How will you reward yourself for a job well done? :)