TeamTinyNaNo

If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you know that all four of us Turtleduck Press authors are old hands at NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). That’s where we met, in fact–on the NaNo forums, many moons ago. (Or most of us? One of them will correct me if I’m wrong.) Most of us still haven’t met in person…but I digress.

Back in the day, we were young(er) and foolish and could whip out the requisite 50,000 words in a month without breaking a sweat. (Okay, maybe a little bit of sweat.) But for me at least, those days are long gone. My brain, wrists, and responsibilities won’t let me rack up words like that anymore.

Still, there’s something magical about that NaNo energy. So we were talking in our regular virtual write-in, and KD suggested that even if we couldn’t manage 1,667 words a day in November, we could surely manage 100 words a day. (Hat tip to Debbie Ohi as well.) It would get us 3000 words by the end of the month.

That’s not exactly a NaNo, but it’s not nothing, either. It’s about a chapter (or two chapters or half a chapter, depending on pacing). Or it’s one short story. Or it’s several flash fiction stories. And, more importantly, it’s more than we had in October. For me at least, it was also more than I’d written in October.

Spoiler: we did it. We may not have written every single day, but Erin, KD, and I all wrote at least 3000 words of fiction last month. (Kit pulled off a full 50,000-word NaNo because she is a wizard.) We even picked up an extra TinyNaNoer on Instagram, romance author Suzanne Stengl, who made her goal too.

Our young and foolish selves might be disdainful, maybe, but this year? This year, writing anything is a freaking miracle. It’s a scream into the void. It’s a candle in the darkness. It’s an anchor, a bridge, an expression of hope. It’s Gandalf on the bridge in Moria, planting his staff and shouting “You shall not pass!”

And I’m setting the same goal again for December. Only 2415 words to go.