Can You Write 50,000 Words in a Month?

By Poison Ivy,

That’s right, fifty thousand words of a novel, all to be written in the month of June. The Kiwi Writers, a New Zealand writing group, runs the Southern Cross Novel Challenge, SoCNoC, starting tomorrow (that’s today already for some of you) and ending June 30th. This Internet challenge is open to all, across the globe. Unlike the National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, the November writing challenge sponsored by a California-based nonprofit that attracts thousands of participants, you can’t get lost in the crowd with SoCNoC. The Kiwi Writers is a small group. But determined to write 50k in June. You can join the fun and feel part of a cozy, yet worldwide group.

As you progress, you post your daily word count and check out how everyone else is doing. There’s a tiny bit of competitiveness involved since you can see where you rank against others. There is no single winner; everyone who participates and writes 50,000 words wins. The Southern Cross Novel Challenge runs strictly on the honor system, and you don’t have to verify your word count. You don’t need to. The prize is your deep personal satisfaction in having written anything at all.

Of course the idea of a writing challenge like SoCNoC is to push yourself to write every day, with a goal of getting most or all of a novel completed in first draft in a very short amount of time. Are you up for it? Go sign up and sharpen your fingertips. Haul out that story you’ve been meaning to set down, and have a go at it.