International Novel Writing Year

I'm a lazy person. I really am. I also have some ambitions that I never live up to. For example, I constantly say that I want to write but when the time comes I'll probably browse some forums and read some webcomics instead.

So I have created what I think will be a balm against this. Keep in mind that this thing is first and foremost for me. It might help you, but it's really made to help me. It's a tool.

That's International Novel Writing Year, as inspired by a combination of factors but also intended partly as a response to National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo (I have the pretty sweet acronym thing of INoWriteYeah)

The whole goal of it is this:

Write a 50,000 word novel in 365 days

And that's it!

Now I've done the math on this. If you want to coast through on the bare minimum you need to write about 137 words a day. That's every day, for a year. This post is going to be more than that! You probably send more in text messages and emails and post more in status updates than that a day. But that's the constant working way.

If we up the word count a little and go to 200 words a day, it will only take eight and a half months. That's right, you'll get 115 days off in the year during which you don't have to do squat. You don't have a daily quota, you can just relax.

200 words isn't very much.

The whole point of it, for me, isn't to treat writing as some sudden burst of energy and creativity. You don't jump up and down shouting EUREKA! Instead, you simply put in the work every day and you slowly but steadily write something and in the process become better at writing. This is about forming a habit and about letting writing soak into your bones.

I'm probably going to start this December 1st.

Who's with me?