National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, has officially kicked off.

What is NaNoWriMo? It’s a writing frenzy that takes place every November, meant to inspire people who always say they want to write a novel but never have the time. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, focusing on sheer output instead of quality.

When the Twitter buzz started up about NaNoWriMo this year, I thought back to my first (and previously my only) experience. Much to my surprise, it was three years ago that I wrote my first novel — and truth be told, I haven’t touched it since.

But I knew that I wanted to participate again, not to “win” by writing a novel, but to feed off of the excitement and inspiration from fellow writers and encourage myself to set aside time each day to write — something I should be doing already, but “get too busy”. I’m already enjoying having time specifically for writing, so I hope I can keep up the habit after November ends.

If you are also doing National Novel Writing Month or would like to track my progress, you can find me here.