National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is approaching! Every year, people across the world, not just the nation, try and write that novel they’ve always said they’ll write. The official charity that supported the event imploded earlier this year. But the event goes forward with or without official support. There’s tons of other organizations, businesses, and charities that are trying to pick up the pieces, but I don’t have much to say on that. I’m focused on trying to do the challenge for myself.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in November. Whether that finishes a novel or just provides the first part isn’t important. My book might end up being longer, but I don’t know yet. The goal is just to write, not edit, so the final word count might be less as editing prunes the count down. Most novels are actually longer coming in close to 100,000 words so 50,000 is really just a starting point.

Another important part of NaNoWriMo is that the writing has to occur during the month. I’ve written a tiny bit of my planned novel before the month, so I don’t get to count those words for the 50,000 word total. The outline that I’ve already written is allowed though.

Here’s the 53 word bit I’ve already written

Djeiclay heard the porthole click as it cycled through to another world. He examined his fingernails as the porthole continued to click. Every five seconds a new world appeared in the porthole. Djeiclay glanced at each world for a moment. Too dry, too wet, too cold, too early, too late. He pressed the…

I’ll be writing my novel on the blog. Hopefully with a new post every day for whatever I’ve written that day. With 30 days in November that’s an average of 1,667 words per day or about 5 pages.

Each post will have chapter titles which don’t count for the word total. At the bottom of the post I’ll put how many words were in that post along with a running word count. With 50,053 being our target number by the end of November 30th. I’ll also slap these little button things at the bottom to help navigate for people reading the posts. And anyone reading better keep in mind that this isn’t edited.

Post Word Count: 383

Total Word Count: 0+53

One response to “How I’m Tackling NaNoWriMo”

Leave a comment

I’m Isaac

Welcome to the GoCorral website! I’m Isaac Shaker and this is a place for me to write about D&D and occasionally other topics. I host a podcast called Setting the Stage that interviews different DMs about their campaigns. I’m currently focused on completing the Cimmeria campaign setting and turning it into a book.

Setting the Stage Podcast

84 – Horseback Riding D&D Camp (Michael and SaddleSnaps) Setting the Stage, Campaigns for D&D and Other RPGs

Michael tells us about a D&D horseback riding experience at SaddleSnaps! The Chicago-based stable hosted a weekend camping, horseback riding, and D&D event. About 50 players came from across the country for this new experience. During the event, the players were split up into three groups. Each of the groups engaged in the "Exploration" and "Social Interaction" pillars of RPGs as a LARP. They used horses to go out on rides around the area to find clues to a developing mystery. After returning to their base camp they'd set up around tables for the D&D "Combat" pillar. Michael was the main DM of the adventure along with lots of support DMs and NPC actors helping him out.SaddleSnaps is planning to do more rides like this in the future, both single day rides as well as full weekend campouts like this first one. There are evening rides every Thursday for the rest of July 2026 with more to come in future months. You can check out everything about SaddleSnaps on their website.Michael has his own website for his RPG resources called Paragon Provisions that you can check out as well.Michael also runs his own Discord server that you connect with him on if you'd like to keep up with all the cool D&D stuff he's doing.Check out the Setting the Stage website!Want to be on the show? Fill out this survey.Join our Discord!Support Setting the Stage on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
  1. 84 – Horseback Riding D&D Camp (Michael and SaddleSnaps)
  2. 83 – Call of Cthulhu's Garden (Hem and The Sprouting)
  3. 82 – Tarot Ghosts (George and Fears & Fortunes)
  4. 81 – Biopunk 2287 RPG (Seiya and Synesthesia Synthetica)
  5. 80 – Dynamic RPG Countries (Travis and Tetara)