Accomplish Your Writing Goals

Write a Novel in a Month

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Not a Fiction Writer?

• Set your own writing goal.
  
• Blog every day.
  
• Write 50,000 words on your nonfiction book.
  
• Write a nonfiction book proposal.
  

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. In 2007, over 100,000 individuals participated in NaNoWriMo. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline. For details, log on to http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Too Busy to Write for a Solid Month? Try One Week Each Month

Try Book-In-A-Week (BIW). Their motto? BIC HOK TAM means butt in chair, hands on keyboard, typing away madly. One week each month, you write like crazy. Then edit the other three weeks.
BIW connects writers through a list created at Yahoo. You decide your own writing goals, and then submit them to the list the week prior to BIW. During BIW, writers write as much as they can and post their daily totals to the list. They schedule each month's writing week a year in advance. Some writers participate every month. Others only participate a few times a year.