Do You NaNoWriMo?

By Judy Penz Sheluk

For those of you unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel during the thirty days of November.

This year, I’m committed to working on the final book in my Glass Dolphin Mystery series and this is just the push I need to get serious! I know exactly where I want to leave Arabella Carpenter, Emily Garland, and Levon Larroquette in their lives.

All that said, I am most definitely a pantser (meaning I have no idea how I’m going to get Arabella, Emily, and Levon to THE END) and I almost never write 1,666 words a day (the required amount to reach 50,000 words). Add to the mix that I have multiple events happening in November—including
leading a NaNoWriMo session at the Angus Public Library on Saturday, November 16 from 2 to 4 p.m.— and you might ask why I’ve decided to sign up.