Novel November

For years, November has been the month that everyone hunkers down to write 50,000 words of their novels. Personally, I think November is one of the worst months of the year to do this — work is crazy, as everyone tries to finish off big projects before people start leaving for the holidays, and the month ends with Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and all the chaos of cleaning, cooking, and hosting that this holiday entails.

This November was extra-complicated for me, because I had preventative surgery mid-month after getting some scary test results earlier in the year. I’m grateful to no longer have to stress about cancer, and leave all of the endless check-ups and blood tests and so on behind me, but I was pretty nervous about how recovery would go. Add on the holiday and my writing goals, and it all seemed a little insurmountable.

But I did it! I set a mini-goal for myself of writing every single day, and because I knew the second half of the month would be unpredictable as I recovered from surgery, I decided to front-load things. On November 1st, I actually managed to write 10,000 words of my book, knocking out 20% of my goal in a single day! Pretty wild, honestly… and not something I think I’ll be able to repeat, ever.

Writing every day was a great mini-goal for me, too. Even if I added just one more word to my document, I’d count it as progress forward. But most of the time, when I’d sit down to add just one word, I’d find a few hundred more to add, too. Sometimes even thousands more. I want to keep that practice going in the future, as it wasn’t too onerous and also gave me the huge forward momentum I needed on this draft.

The project I worked on is the third book in my Cambridge series, featuring both enemies-to-lovers and fake dating tropes in the Classics department. Cassie and Ethan were friends in undergrad until he betrayed her, and now the only way they can both be chosen to lead the summer research project in Greece is if they pretend like they’re dating. I ended up writing 57,000 words of their story this month, making it to the third act break-up… and now I have to figure out how to get them back together again (whoops!)

I’m planning to spend December finishing off their story (though I might need to let my ideas simmer a little bit while I try to figure out just how to resolve their conflict) and also prepping my synopsis and query letter for Book 1 in the series. 2026 will be my year to start querying agents, which I’m sure will be a valuable learning process for me, too. I can’t believe we’re already in the last month of the year, but I’m so ready for what’s to come!