Dear Writers,
It is my pleasure and privilege to write this letter for NaNoWriMo! I am very honored to have been asked to do so by the Young Writers Program.
I am impressed by you. All of you. Because your lives are busy. You have a multitude of things you could be doing now and you make the choice to write. You’ve decided to participate in something large and wonderful and exciting—you’re trying to write a novel. Congratulations!
I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo, but I’ve never written a novel in a month. But I still love writing along with the others who are. I like to think of the “Mo” at the end of NaNoWriMo as “More.” So November is often my month of writing more. I find more moments in the day to write down a sentence or two, more space in my life to think about the novel and what it could be and who the characters are. I let them linger in my mind a little longer, I cook things like pancakes for dinner so I have more time to write, I jot down more notes on the backs of school assignments or send more texts about the novel (questions, ideas, etc.) to myself.
So—what is your more? It could be so many things. It could mean that you write 100 more words a day than you do now. It could mean that you write an hour longer than you have been. It could mean that you start your writing early every day, or that you look at things like favorite shows or favorite time wasters or social networks and decide that these things, for this month, are less than your desire to make this novel happen.
Whenever I used to run races or compete in anything, my grandmother used to say, “I won’t wish you luck because you don’t need it. I wish you success!” I wish all of you young writers the same—success, however you choose to define it—in this wonderful month of writing more.
Yours truly,
Ally Condie