Sit Down and Write Month - Kickoff

It's November 1st...time to sit down and write! If you have decided to join us, I couldn't be more happy. Let's lift up and support each other along our writing journeys.

As I mentioned in the announcement/sign-up post, I will also be participating in Sarra Cannon's Heart Breathings Rough Draft Challenge. You can read my initial explanation of the challenge in the sign-up post here. They have created a website for the challenge and it is live for signups. I'm headed over there as soon as I publish this post. I just look at it like...what could be better than two communities supporting each other in writing? 

There's a free Rough Draft Challenge planner/plotting workbook you can get if you sign up for the Heart Breathings newsletter here. 

The initial videos for the Rough Draft Challenge are listed below. Whether you decide to join the challenge or not, Sarra's videos are very uplifting and helpful. You can subscribe to her YouTube channel and watch for free anytime. There is a wealth of helpful writing videos on her channel.

• Saying Goodbye To NaNoWriMo ✨WELCOME TO THE ROUGH DRAFT CHALLENGE
• Preptober Planner Walkthrough 2024
• 10 Steps To Start Your Novel ✨PREPTOBER 2024
• How I'm Planning My New Book
• How to Join the Rough Draft Challenge
• Last Minute Novel Prep ✨💎ROUGH DRAFT CHALLENGE

I did not have time to do much novel prep in October so during the early part of the month, I will be doing that. I'm setting my word count goal at 25,000 for the actual novel writing, which will be about a quarter of my planned word count for my novel. If I write more, that will be even more of a win...but I don't want to spread myself too thin with the holidays starting this month. The image above is a page from the Rough Draft Challenge planner/plotting workbook, and my notebook with my novel planning notes.

What is your word count goal? Writing plans? Share in the comments and/or over on our Discord. If you haven't joined it, here is the invite link: https://discord.com/invite/CVrqt423wC

If you're not joining the Rough Draft Challenge (and updating your word count on that website), here are a couple of sites where you can keep track of word counts:
Pacemaker
Word Count Tool
Writer's Atelier (this is a post with a whole list of options)

We're ready, right?! I'm excited!

Here's another pep talk quote for you...

"You'll probably always be your own worst critic, but you won't likely be a fair one—don't be afraid to seek (and apply) feedback from trusted sources, while remembering that outside of true errors, it's all subjective. Good or bad, they are all just opinions—ultimately, you have to do what best honors your voice as a writer." —Christina C. Jones from "IndieLab"

Let's do this!

via GIPHY