As a part of the NaNoWriMo challenge.

Tomorrow is the 1st of November. All around the world, thousands of people will glue to their laptops, writing a novel.

They will write 50,000 words in 30 days.

That is 1,667 words a day.

This annual event is known as NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.

Each year, I take part in the challenge. I have been doing that since I found out about it in 2011.

Sometimes I win it, other times I don’t.

Winning means writing 50,000 words before the clock strikes midnight on 30th November.

Many times, I manage only a few thousand words. But I participate each year, regardless. The only exceptions are when I am traveling in November. However, twice I wrote during the travel. It killed me and ruined all the fun, so I decided not to do that again.

In NaNoWriMo terms, I am a rebel writer.

Which means I write things other than a novel.

In 2011, I wrote a short story and managed to write only 2,340 words.

In 2012, I wrote my memoir and wrote 13,458 words towards it.

In 2013, I wrote a collection of short stories and won the challenge.

In 2015, I wrote the first draft of my first novel and won it again by writing 52,504 words.

In 2016, I wrote a travel memoir and cranked up 40,516 words.

In 2017, I wrote 14,169 words in diary-style personal writing.

In 2018, I wrote 55,757 words long self-help book and won it again.

In 2019, I wrote a collection of blog articles (15,437 words).

In 2020, I wrote the draft of my second novel (17,370 words).

In 2021, I wrote a memoir again, Diary of A Wannabe Writer (16,670 words)

This year, I am planning to finish the first novel I wrote in 2015 and get it ready for publication.

But somehow that doesn’t bring in the excitement of a challenge.

So I want to up the ante, and write another book in parallel.

In public.

On LinkedIn and Medium.

Starting tomorrow.

If I have intrigued you enough and you too want to write a novel or a book in November, you can join NaNoWriMo here.

I am going to need all your encouragement and support.

An online friend on LinkedIn wrote, “You have taken on quite a challenge there.” My response was, “The worst that can happen is I fail. But I will fail doing something. Which is not a failure but a step forward. I will learn from my mistake and do it better next time.”

I have changed my relationship with failure.

I don’t see them as failures anymore. I see them as opportunities to learn.

Back in 1993, I started a business. Selling artificial jewelry. I failed at it miserably.

Then again, in 2001. This time in health supplements. I failed again.

Then I tried my hand at selling real estate, in the middle of the worst recession Australia had ever experienced. Needless to say, I didn’t sell a single house. I had failed again.

Now, thirty years later, when I look back at them, they were not failures; they were learning opportunities.

I learned more from my failures than from my successes. “Writing” was my biggest failure. In my first performance review as a middle manager, my boss said to me, “The only thing standing between you and a senior manager role is your written English.”

Bingo!

A learning opportunity!

I rolled up my sleeves and got on with turning my weakness into a strength.

– I enrolled in writing courses.
– Joined writing groups.
– Started a blog.
– Read books.
– Then wrote some.

Today, when someone says to me, “You write very well,” I smile. I tell them it is because I am not afraid of failures.

The next 30 days will show whether I fail again and learn some lessons. Or able to use what I learned about writing in the past 3–4 years and write a book in public.

I do crazy things like these now and then.

If you have been following me for a while, you would know that back in January 2021, I posted on three social media platforms for 100 consecutive days.

Then again in April 2021, I announced that I will write 100 articles in 100 days. And I did that too.

Then, in June 2021, I set myself a challenge to write a book in a week and I did that too. I even wrote an update each day, sharing my progress.

This is something like that.

A challenge to push the boundaries and do some more under pressure.

I have been trying to talk myself out of it but the idea won’t leave me. So I am going to go ahead and do it.

What is my plan?

My plan is to fictionalize a non-fiction book.

It is going to be an interesting idea, and I am very excited about it. At least for the time being. I can’t say whether this excitement will last for the entire month.

I will not chase the 50,000 words (I am a rebel writer, after all). Instead, I am going to weave a story around the messages I want to get across. If I could do that convincingly, the skeleton will be done and the book can be beefed up in subsequent edits.

When I announced this crazy idea on LinkedIn, I didn’t realize that LinkedIn posts have a limit of 3000 characters (which is about 500–600 words). So my plan is to write an abridged version on LinkedIn and a full version on Medium. I hope it will work.

From experience, I know there will be days in the month when I cannot write. Such days come, we all know that, so I am giving myself permission to skip a few days here and there and make up for them when I can.

To save you from a flood of emails, I will publish the daily chapters in my profile and will give you updates from time to time, along with the links.

As I am writing these words, my inner critic is lifting its head and before he talks me out of sending this post, I am going to hit publish.

See you tomorrow!

Bye for now.