So you’ve been thinking about NaNoWriMo, but you’re not sure you want to sign up.  After all, November is pretty busy, with Thanksgiving and the family stuff you always get caught up in.   And it’s right before Christmas which takes a lot of planning, and don’t forget you have to do the whole Black Friday, Saturday, Sunday and every-day-until-Christmas shopping frenzy thing.

You’re afraid NaNoWriMo might just be more than you can chew that month.

How about changing the way you look at this writing opportunity?  Notice I used the word “opportunity.”  As Webster says, “A good chance or occasion to advance oneself.”

Let me offer three reasons to take that leap of faith in yourself and participate in this annual event.

1.  You create your own opportunities for success

If you’ve been complaining for the past eleven months that you don’t have time to write—this is your opportunity.

If you want to advance your writing skills—this is your opportunity.

If you want to increase the word count in your Work In Progress (WIP)—this is your opportunity.

If you want to create a new habit of daily writing—this is your opportunity.

If you can think of any other upside to setting aside one month of your year in which you might write the next best-seller—this is your opportunity to take advantage of it.

2.  Opportunity comes in many forms

The thought of writing 50,000 words in thirty days makes your brain spin like you’re on a whirl-a-gig ride at the fair.  And you really aren’t ready to begin a new WIP.

Take a deep breath and change the way you’re looking at the end result of doing NaNoWriMo this November.

Ask yourself what you gain with 50,000 new words in your arsenal?

50,000 words is one short novel.  (The average novel is 64, 531, according to Amazon’s Text Stats.)

50,000 words is a generous novella.  (Generally 20,000-50,000 words.)

50,000 words are 20 long-length short stories.

50,000 words are more than 33 short story contest entries meeting a maximum word count of 1,500.

50,000 words are 500 flash fiction pieces at 100 words per story.

50,000 words are 725 tweets.  (Average length of a tweet is 67.9 words.  How many tweets do you send each day?  What if you spent that writing time and those words on creating your novel?)

3.  Writing discipline creates future opportunities

Those 50,000 NaNoWriMo words fit neatly into thirty days if you maintain a daily count of 1, 667 words.

Just think what you could do with a new habit of writing 1,667 words each day for the rest of the year.

1,667 words x 7 = 11,669 words each week

11,669 words x 4 = 46,676 words each month

46,676 words x 12 = 560,112 words in the next twelve months

560,112 words x 10 = 5,601,120 words in the next ten years

And those 5,601,120 words could very well be your next 86 novels.

Maybe that’s motivation to forgo some of the festivities of November in order to create a strong foundation for the future of your writing career.