For a children’s writer, writing 50,000 words in one month is a lot. In fact, it is more than the average number of words in a middle-grade book. I’m not the fastest writer in the world, so I needed to do something to make sure I’d win NaNoWriMo 2009. (Stephanie and Kitty can say Pshaw! [...]

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First, can I just give a shout out to all our NaNo-ing friends who hit the 50,000 word mark? Woo-hoooo!!!! You guys ROCK!!!
Second, if you participated this year – or anytime you’re challenging yourself to write more – and you didn’t hit the mark you were aiming for, sit down for a second and look [...]

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          Looks like I’m the out of step with the group again. Unlike Shonna (Congratulations!), I didn’t finish NaNo and unlike Kitty, I’m not even close. I haven’t written a word on my NaNoNovel since the day before I wrote my blog about quitting. [...]

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          Last week I told you I was quitting my NaNoNovel and going to work on non-fiction. I’m sure you are wondering if my experiment worked. It did! Maybe my new motto needs to be, “If at first you don’t succeed, Quit!” [...]

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Here we are half-way through NaNoWriMo. For those of you toughing it out, how is your middle going? I find mine lagging a bit so I went online for some encouragement. Here’s what I found:
Richard Harland says: For me, there’s always a moment, 10-15,000 words in, when the tight opening sequence of scenes runs out. [...]

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          NaNo this year has been a crazy roller coaster ride. Most of the month has been filled with frustration, interspersed with a few brilliant flashes of creativity and success. Routine family activities have mushroomed into schedule-crunching emergencies. Small tasks have grown huge and stolen time from the writing. [...]

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I am simply falling over from exhaustion. My eyes are half-closed as I type and they fully close every time I stop to think of what to say. {zzzz} Oops, sorry!
I love NaNoWriMo, and I love the book I’m writing, and I love my friends, and I love my husband, and I love sleeping, and [...]

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          If anyone is following me on the NaNoWriMo site, you know that I am way, way behind. I’m trying, really I am. I’m not going to make it to 50K by writing 2605 words a week, though. I wouldn’t be too concerned if [...]

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November 1st I peeked into NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program (YWP) to get some ideas to use with my elementary school-aged children. Yes, I had tricked talked them into volunteering to write every day for the entire month of November.
How?
With the promise that we would do NaNo instead of spelling and other Language Arts activities. My [...]

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Routines for Writers is pleased to welcome Darren Gore, the NaNoWriMo Muncipal Liaison for Kitty’s area, Sydney, Australia. Welcome Darren!
In November 2003, I made my first attempt at writing 50,000 NaNo-words. And failed.
Twelve months later in November 2004, I tried again. And failed again.
November 2005 saw my third attempt. And third failure.
As November 2006 approached, [...]

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