GoCorral

I’ve completed National Novel Writing Month! (NaNoWriMo) 50,000 words in 1 month. Along with celebrating two family birthdays and Thanksgiving in the same month. November really isn’t the best month for this tradition, is it?

My typical yearly output* for writing on the blog is 30,000 words across 60ish posts. This challenge squeezed an extra 50,000+ into 29 posts. I’d finished my 50,000 words on the 29th and decided to take the 30th off.

At the end of it I’ve got most of a first draft that I’m pretty happy with. Over the next few weeks I can finish it up at a slower pace. After that it depends.

I entered the Reedsy Novel Sprint contest. As part of NaNoWriMo, Reedsy hosted a contest. People sign up for NaNoWriMo and write their novel within Reedsy’s browser application to prevent cheating. The people that finish the 50,000 words have their work read. The top ten of those are selected for additional reading. The top three get a cash prize and a meeting with a publisher. The other seven of the top ten get an e-reader.

There were about 4,000 people that entered Reedsy’s contest on November 1st. There’s about 5,000 now. Typically, only 20% of people finish NaNoWriMo. Assuming the later entries were unsuccessful that indicates there’s probably around 800 books finished. The Reedsy staff will read the first chapter of each to determine the top ten for prizes.

Is my first attempt going to get to the top ten? Well, it’d be nice, but probably not. I feel like my writing could be at the same level as other self-published authors using Reedsy. But I’m not very practiced at writing long-form content. Either way, the winners aren’t announced until sometime in February.

The more likely outcome is that I complete the manuscript without a prize. Next, I do a self-edit pass. After that I beg my friends to read it and offer additional edits. Then I’ll take it to a real editor. I could try throwing the book at real publishers at that point, but that’s unlikely to go anywhere. Assuming that doesn’t work I’ll need some cover art and a layout for self-publication.

Reedsy snagged me with the contest, but it also has good connections for working with freelance professionals for all the things I’d need for self-publication. Editors, layouts, cover artists, and more like marketing and publicists. It’s likely I’ll take advantage of that even without the contest victory. So that’s why they ran the contest! AHA!

Anyways, I had fun doing the NaNoWriMo contest. If you did the contest as well I hope you finished and had fun as well. Looking forward to doing it next year for the sequel to this book!

*My output for 2023 and 2024 was actually closer to 150,000 words each. That was because I was editing and republishing the Xorian Wars campaign log that was originally published on the Order of the Stick forums between 2011 and 2020. My 30,000 average comes from my 2021 and 2022 numbers. 2025 was slightly higher, sitting at around 100,000 words at the moment with the NaNoWriMo posts included in that number.