For years I’ve always found the thought of NaNoWriMo quite intimidating and was put off by the sheer amount of words that have to be produced in a month, but then I’ve put off the idea of writing in general as I am so nervous of committing to writing anything over and above a blog post here and there, a couple of hundred words on something that is external to me.

I’ve quite happily put book reviews, film reviews, thoughts on art history, and lots of other subjects out into the world as these have been flow of consciousness types of writing, no planning and only a few paragraphs long, but I’ve never committed to putting down my own ideas in the form of stories, poetry, or other forms of writing which require more thought and polishing.

I’ve decided to participate in NaNoWriMo in 2023, but under my own terms, I’m going to use the month (and the year preceding it) to commit to the idea of writing.

I’ve accumulated loads of books and links over the years. I will be using these and the NaNoWriMo community to help me embed writing as a habit over the year leading to November 2023 so that it is easier to continue this once the month is over.

So I’m going to try and write, or explore something to do with writing, every day.

This may be actual writing itself, or it could be watching a Youtube video, or other media and thinking about it, jotting down some notes and reflecting on what I’ve been told and learned.

Or it may be responding to a writing prompt from somewhere, reading about writing in one of the many books I have on the subject, jotting down ideas, writing a poem or a drabble, expanding a character profile, working on world building for an RPG setting, anything, but it will be to do with the craft of writing and whatever it produces will go onto this blog, it may be private for me as it is about learning, but there will be tons of random posts on here.

In anticipation of starting this journey I treated myself to a Paper Republic XL Traveller’s Journal so will see lots of that in various photographs I put up on the blog.

I’m really looking forward to this journey as it feels I’ve been building up to it for years.

(this post was originally at http://www.stephenbaird.org.uk/2022/12/15/nanowrimo-2023/ which I was going to use as my writing blog, but I’m just going to use here as well as for everything else to save me hassle)

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