Why I'm not doing NaNo...

[I know I promised to give away an ARC of My Soul To Steal today, but I have to push that back by one more day, in order to post what's below. But look for the contest tomorrow. I swear, this book wants a home. ;)]

Why I'm not doing NaNoWriMo:

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month--a November-long challenge to writers to try and write 50,000 words in one month. It's a sort of group-incentive program.

It's been going on longer than I've been writing, and I've always wanted to participate, but I've never been able to, and it doesn't look like I ever will. And here's why.

The timing's never been right for me. Unless you've "won" a previous NaNo event, you have to start a novel from scratch on Nov. 1, and as a contracted writer, that's impossible for me. I'm always already in mid-novel on Nov. 1, and my deadlines are too tight for me to set that novel aside and work on a side project for an entire month.I can't commit an entire month to just one novel. I inevitably get edits or revisions during November and am forced to divert my attention from the novel I'm actually writing.In order to prove that you've actually written 50,000 words in the month of November, you have to upload your novel to be verified by the staff. They'll let you scramble the words first (they even provide directions for this) but for a writer who's paranoid about spoilers from her brand new series leaking out, this doesn't work for me.50,000 words in a month is actually under my natural pacing. I aim for a chapter a day, which is 3,000+ words per day, five days a week. Which is 60,000 words per month, bare minimum.

But, I love the idea of NaNo, and I love the camaraderie. So my critique partner Rinda Elliott and I are going to do our own private version. We don't have a name for it yet (suggestions?) but we're going to hold one another accountable and post our daily progress, with links to one another.

Starting today.

Yesterday, I started with 16,400 words on my novel (the first in my new series, which I hope to be able to announce soon). I wrote just over 3,100 words.

Here's my progress on the novel, overall:

19516 / 100000
(19.52%)

Here's my progress toward my November goal of 65,000 words:

3116 / 65000
(4.79%)

Rinda made her goal too! So far, so good!