I write books, and I can often get a first draft written in just a few weeks. The second draft, editing, proofing, and so on, they’re all the things that take time. So writing a novel in 30 days should be simple, right?
Well, no.
I’ve never successfully completed NaNoWriMo – that’s National Novel Writing Month, an annual event every November – and I’ve tried two or three times. I normally get about a week in and give up because writing every day is hard. Even though, if I were writing a novel, I’d do it every day anyway. I think it’s something to do with being under pressure to write every day…you can’t tell me what to do!
However, in 2016 I managed to get it all done…in 20 days no less! The nominal goal is to write a novel of 50,000 words or more in 30 days (so at least 1,667 words a day). I completed the story and hit 50,012 words on November 19th, and tweaked it a little on November 20th so it is now slightly longer.
I won’t be doing any more work on it until after Christmas, but I like the way it has turned out so far. There will be more on the A Murder In Nether Bumble page as I make progress with it, and hopefully it will be published in Q2 2017.