Friends, welcome to National Novel Writing Month 2025—also fondly known as “NaNoWriMo” among those of us who have a love/hate relationship with it. NaNo is the unofficial month during which writers of all sorts pour every word they’ve ever come into contact with and can chip out of their brains onto the page in attempts to write a full “novel” by the end of November. I put “novel” in quotes because the goal is mainly to write 50,000 words, which is approximately the length of a short novel. If you’re writing every day, that’s about 1,700 words per day. I like to take Sundays off, so that puts me at 2,000 words per day (which is a nicer, rounder number than 1,666.667 words per day). Of course, NaNo is very customizable. You can change your word count goal, or your goal can just be to write something every day. NaNo works best when you make it your own.

I don’t do NaNo every year, since it works best for me if it lines up with the start of a new project. (If I’m halfway through revisions or copyediting, I don’t love stopping halfway through those and starting a new novel.) But this year, the timelines have aligned relatively well, and I’ve decided to work on another draft of the final book in my Sky Raiders trilogy. If you’re interested in following my progress, you can track my daily word counts with me here. (I even made a cute pie chart for it.) I’ll also be posting regular updates here on the blog with some of my favorite lines from the days that I get my writing done. (Just as a warning though, if you haven’t read Shadow Hawks yet, there are some spoilers. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.) 

Thanks for staying tuned, and good luck to everyone starting NaNo!

Saturday, November 1, 2025

2,000 words

“I thought—I thought it would be good for us all to come together to share our reports from the last several months.” 

Actually, Bishop thought it was a good idea. She thought it was a good way to role play scenes of torture from her life…

Monday, November 3, 2025

2,500 words

Eli might have been as nervous about his presentation as [REDACTED NAME] had been for the whole meeting. He’d asked her earlier if he should comb his hair. She didn’t think he owned a comb, so she said no, and he’d looked relieved.

Tuesday, November 4, 2025

2,000 words

The room was silent. Even the music and dancing and laughter outside was somehow muted and gray, and everything that had been in the room with them—whatever was left that had held the three of them together—was burned away.

Wednesday, November 5, 2025

2,400 words

“So what was all that shouting about?”

“What shouting?”

“The shouting that everyone could hear coming from your room halfway across the courtyard.”

“If you heard it, then I’m guessing you already know what it’s all about.”