What I Loved About 'RWA 50K in May'

by Marilyn Forsyth

Image courtesy of Giphy

I have just enjoyed the most inspirational month of writing, joining more than 80 other romance writers in the ‘RWA 50K in May’ group. I’d often thought of doing NaNoWriMo, but November is way too busy a time for me. MayNoWriMo, though, I reckoned could do!

Image courtesy of Giphy

Being a pragmatist, I knew I would never reach the dizzying heights of writing 50K over four weeks, so I set 20K as my goal. I'm more than happy to report that in May I more than doubled my usual monthly output.

Participating in the group was, for me, a great exercise in discipline. Every day, even when I was pressed for time or lacking in focus, I had to get some words down because I needed to report my word count each night.


A number of participants came up with some great tips to keep track of progress:

*Anne Gracie suggested rounding down the word count to the nearest hundred, checking how close to the next hundred you are and pushing yourself past it. I used a version of this by rounding down and using anything over that hundred as an automatic head start for the following day.

Link to Kendall's page

*Kendall Talbot posted a chart to achieve 30K in 30 days (above) which was adapted by Suzy Jay. I used a combination of both (below).

My version of the Word Count Chart at the beginning of the month.

*The spreadsheet created by Sarah Brabazon was a great motivator! I had to try to get that red line to meet the green line. (Didn't manage until right at the end, as you can see!)

*Quite a few members joined in sprints, which I wasn’t able to because I leave nights free for family time, but it obviously worked well for them.

At the outset, I did tend to compare my own word count to that of others, but there really is no point to that. With something like this you have to run your own race. I salute writers who can produce several thousand words a day but I have to accept that it’s not what I do.

The thing about joining a group like this is that everyone supports each other, urging one another on to meet our goals. The camaraderie was sensational. As writers, we lead an isolated existence, and it’s great to know that there are others out there experiencing the same things we go through.

Image courtesy of writerswrite.co.za

It was also great to have commiserations when the frustrations of life got in the way, when things didn’t go to plan, or when disaster struck. I had a ‘hot wax’ experience (not as kinky as it possibly sounds😉) where I spilled my ‘ritual’ scented candle over the keyboard, traumatizing my laptop into shutdown mode. It was a very anxious overnight wait to see if I’d lost all the words I’d written, but I was still able to access the group via my ipad, and having people out there who understood the way I was feeling really helped. (The laptop had recovered by the next morning and the words weren’t lost. Yay!)

At the end of the month I had written 20 000 words. Yep, I reached my goal!

Image courtesy of Giphy

And altogether our group wrote over 1 million words!

A huge shout out to Delwyn Jenkins for coordinating the group, and to all my fellow participants. I really enjoyed your company and hope to meet in person those of you going to the conference in BrisVegas, in August.

The idea now is to ‘maintain the rage’, so to speak, and keep that doubled-up weekly word count happening.

Wish me luck!

Have you ever dedicated a month to writing with a group? How did you go?

Love to Love the fact that I’m now close to halfway to finishing my current wip.

Love to Laugh at Juanita Kee’s take on participating in RWA 50K in May. Here’s the link: Procrastination and a Mutinous Muse

Love to Learn different ways to increase my word count!