My Own Personal NaNoWriMo 2025

As many of you already know, there isn't going to be an "official" National Novel Writing Month in November 2025 or in the foreseeable future or, most likely, ever. The main organization had some problems, and, as a result, they shut everything down.

Anyway... 

I have to admit I'm kind of bummed about this. Each of my (5) completed NaNo books was independently published and one of them, Ghost Star, was a winner of the Kindle Scout competition and later published by Kindle Press, an Amazon imprint. So, it's safe to say I was invested in what used to be a fun and productive writing challenge -- 50k words in the month of November made you a winner.

What am I going to do about the aforementioned bummage?  Why, I'm returning to the spirit of the early days of the challenge to do my own personal dialed-back version of NaNoWriMo. I've got a few big things going on in Nov/Dec (one of my kids is getting married, etc), so that's where the dialing back part comes in -- 30,000 words instead of 50,000. That means 1k a day for the duration which I think is doable. 

For this year's challenge, I'll be finishing the third book in the Ghost Star Adventures Series, cleverly titled Ghost Star 3. That, of course, is a working title. We'll see what I come up with. Got any suggestions? The actual title usually appears in my mind sometime around the final edit. 

Since I don't have an "official" word count widget, the plan is to stop by and post my progress once or twice a week. Maybe more. I'm doing this because, you know, accountability = fear of shame-based motivation. 

Saturday, November 1st is almost here. Wish me luck, and feel free to stop by and shame me about my lackluster word count!