NaNoWriMo - Preparation

I have spent this morning getting my self ready for the National Novel Writing Month challenge, which kicks off on Tuesday 1st November. The idea is that you complete fifty thousand words in November and plough on regardless, doing your best to ignore your inner critic and keeping your focus on getting words on the page.

It's a challenge writing nearly seventeen hundred words every day, but I've completed it before. The last time I finished  I felt an enormous sense of relief that I had got ideas out of my head and onto the page. 

I had started out this year with the intention of using the month to get my current novel finished. I'm going to try and stick with that, but I also have to recognise that there are a lot of other characters and stories swirling around in my head at the moment and that the next month will offer me an opportunity to coral them.

For me it is a fine line between focussing on my current work, not allowing myself to be distracted, but accepting that I can't carry everying in my head forever.

For this reason, I have committed to writing a 1700 word self contained scene each day. If it pushes my novel forward, that will be great, if it's something completely random I'll accept that  file it away for future use.