DéJàWriMo – Doesn’t It Seem Familiar?

Well, NaNoWriMo didn’t go well for me this year. I struggled through my first 15,000 words or so, upgraded my cell phone to a Droid2, and between the struggle, working 50 hour weeks, and having a new gadget… Well, let’s just say this will only be the second time since I started doing NaNo back in 2005 that I haven’t won.

Congratulations to everyone who *did* win, though. You have my respect and admiration. Now stop reading and go away, darnit. I hate you.

No, no, I’m just kidding. You can come back. Dry your tears. You know I love you, right? I’ll even let you participate in what’s coming next, if you’d like to be an overachiever.

One of my goals and reasons for doing NaNo this year was to get myself back into the habit of writing every day. That didn’t really work out very well and I think there were a couple of reasons:

1. I was extraordinarily busy and stressed out this November, mostly having to do with day job stuff, and that is not a mood conducive to writing creatively.
2. Because of the stress, the 1700 words a day required to win NaNo seemed like an insurmountable barrier – so insurmountable that in the latter half of the month, I couldn’t even find the will to get started, because I was so far behind. When I wrote at all, I usually managed about 800 words before my brain went sizzle and quit.

I’m sure I’m not the only one in this situation. So for all of you out there, who didn’t meet your November goals and are feeling kind of bad about it, I say: Let go of the guilt!

Why don’t you instead join me on a new little project I’ve cooked up? I’m calling it DéJàWriMo.

Here is what I propose:

If you were tired, sick, stressed, unconscious, or just plain lazy during the course of November, why not give your novel another try? DéJàWriMo makes it easy on  you!

Let’s write together over the course of December and January. That allows us 62 days in which to write, and gives us the much more manageable goal of 806 words a day to make 50,000 words by midnight January 31st.

Why DéJàWriMo?

Well, why not? It’s a nice play on words that authors ought to appreciate. De Ja because we’ll be writing during the months of December and January. So it’s ‘December and January Writing Months’. And DéJà because you might just get the eerie feeling that you’ve done this somewhere before… In November perhaps?

So why don’t you take this opportunity and try for a gentler, kinder novel writing experience? I think you owe it to yourself.

Sign up in this thread. I’ll even promise to look into doing stickers, or at the very least a special web badge, for our winners.

Edited for clarification: I want 50,000 new words from participants between now and January 31st. I don’t care whether they’re added on to a work in progress (Did you win NaNo but your story isn’t done? Didn’t win but want to continue anyway?) or whether they’re on a brand new plot (Won NaNo and want to be that overachiever I talked about? I’m all for it!). Heck, I don’t care whether it’s 5 or 10 short stories instead – my goal here is for 50,000 brand, shiny new words. That’s all. Do with them what you will.