So NaNo... What's Up With That?

    Your blogger feed, wordpress feed, and your inbox is about to explode….

      With NaNoWriMo posts.

Sorry for not having an actual picture for this post, my laptop is acting up, I'll hopefully update this soon.

        In case you don't know, NaNoWriMo is an online event that happens in November, which is national writing month. The challenge is to basically write 50k in one month, all through November. It's a great way to meet fellow writers, creatives, and bloggers.

 

      Because of its popularity, the blogging community is about to go CRAZY in a matter of days, already I see NaNo posts or NaNo prepping month posts, which are amazing, but there are going to be SO MANY SO SOON!

 

       I've only been blogging for nine months, and I've already lived through the gazillions of Camp NaNo 2017 and Recovering from NaNo posts.
 

      Now to face the onslaught of hype over the “real deal” NaNo challenge: November NaNo.

 

       In this month of NaNoWriMo “prepping", I want to post something helpful about it, but something different enough to actually notsound like the hundreds of NaNo posts already floating around the interwebs. Unfortunately, I don't think that is possible, but I'm going to try.

 

        Firstly, why do people even do NaNo? And more importantly: Why should you?

        As I said before, NaNoWriMo is a great way to meet fellow writers and bloggers. It's also a great way to track your process on your book, and an amazingmotivation to write.

       If you're like me, you are a slower writer. You don't like to rush your writing that much, and although that can be a good thing, in our case it can also be a bad thing if you stop being motivated to write. Not only is NaNo motivational, but it's a great way to learn how to write faster.

 

 

       Maybe you're a writer who loves challenges and deadlines, or the idea of having a deadline interests you, maybe you want to know how it feels. If one of these is the case, NaNo is perfect for you!

       Don't let the idea of not reaching the goal (50k in a month) discourage you. The point of NaNoWriMo isn't to write a good book or to hit all of your goals every time, the point is to get the words in your head out and to show you that, yes, you can do an incredible amount of work if you put your mind to it.

       Even if you don't reach 50k this November, you are way closer to 50k than you were before. Even if you only wrote 2,000 words, you are closer, you wrote something. It's okay to not “win” NaNo, because at least you are farther along than you were when you started.

        Now that we've covered why NaNo can be great and why you might want to do it, let's cover why you shouldn't do NaNoWriMo.

          You shouldn't do NaNo just because it's a trend. As I said before, your inbox is probably going to blow up this month and next month, and most likely all of your blogger friends and favorite bloggers are going to be participating in NaNo and extremely pumped about it. It can be easy to just do NaNo because it's popular, and you want to relate to all of the fellow creatives, but if that's the onlyreason you're doing NaNoWriMo, I would personally suggest that you re-think.

      Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with doing NaNo because one of your friends is excited about it and you want to try it out, but you won't get very far if you only do NaNo because it's a trend.

 

       Don't do NaNo if it's going to completely stress you out. NaNoWriMo is suppose to be a challenge, but it's also suppose to be a fun challenge that will help you write and achieve your word count goal. So if you're stressed with life, school, work, etc. and you don't think you'll be able to do well in NaNo, don't do it. There's nothing wrong with that. This program is super popular, it will still be running next year most likely, so just let yourself breathe.

       I might not even do NaNo to be honest, because I need to focus on my school and I'm super tired right now. And there's nothing wrong with that, I am doing what I think is best for myself as a writer, student, and teenager.

 

 

        Do what is best for your mental health. Don't do NaNo if it's going to be unnecessarily stressful for you, and definitely don't do it if you're in school like me and you think it's going to affect your grades.

        NaNoWriMo is a great program, I would definitely encourage writers to do it, but I would also encourage some to make sure that it's something they want to do and if it would help them as a writer.

What do you think about NaNo?

Happy Writing,