If you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo), we’re a little over halfway through. If you’ve kept pace so far, at the end of the day today, you should be up to 28,333 words. Even if you’re behind, don’t worry. There’s plenty of time to catch up. As for me, I’m currently at 22,400 words of my personal 50,000 word editing goal for the month.

The month of November was selected for NaNoWriMo on the theory that the bad weather will keep people indoors and writing. Unfortunately, the Thanksgiving holiday can throw a wrench into that idea, and it’s particularly bad in the academic field, where November is one of the busiest months of the year. But if you’re not traveling this year, and you work in an industry that slows down around Thanksgiving, you can use some of that extra time for writing (as I’m hoping to do).

On the other hand, if November just doesn’t work for you, you can always pick a different month; your writing career doesn’t have to end on December 1 (and shouldn’t–more on this later). NaNoWriMo runs two summer sessions called Camp NaNoWriMo in June and August, and you can find informal novel writing events for every month of the year.

The first rule of writing is, “You must write”. It’s also the last rule, in my book, and probably a couple in the middle for good measure. It doesn’t matter what month it is; just keep putting one word after another, and you’ll get there eventually. So keep writing.