November, as I’ve mentioned before, is a crazy month for me, largely because it’s the month when I commit to crazy big writing projects. At least they seem crazy big to me. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, and the challenge is to write a book of at least 50,000 pages by the end of the month. NaBloPoMo is a blogging challenge, to create a new blog post every day during the month. They are both WAY more writing than I normally do.

I’ve been a little stressed about trying this again (I did them both in 2013, and the blogging challenge in 2014 and 2015). What if I fail? What if I fall short? What if I miss a few days or don’t write enough? What if?

The good news is there’s no blog police. There’s no NaNo enforcement division, no writing cops at all. It’s all on me. Whether I complete both challenges, or fail miserably, I win. No matter what, I’ll have written more words this month that I have in the past several months combined (in fact I may already be nearing that number). How could that possibly be a failure? And if my words reach an audience, well, that’s even better.

Yes, I want my blog to be read. I want you to nod your head while you’re reading, then think  to yourself that I just sort of seem to “get” you. I want you to send a link to your friend, because you know I’ll “get” her too. And I will, because you, dear readers, are an awful lot like me.

Knowing that I don’t HAVE to win is a huge worry off my shoulders. Having umpteen plotting tools at my disposal is reassuring as well. I won’t turn into a raving lunatic. At least I hope I won’t.

As author Deborah Ledford said at a recent writing conference I attended, “Nothing prompts more words like working with other words.” How true. This is the reason NaNo and BloMo are meant to be friends. Two or three hundred words on the blog gets my brain, and fingers, warmed up to do 1,700 in my novel. At least that’s the hope. Now we buckle in and see what reality has to offer.