November is a month for abbreviations and productivity. At least in my world, it is.

There’s PiBoIdMo, which is short for Picture Book Idea Month. The idea is to come up with a picture book idea every day for the month of November.  There’s also NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month. The concept is similar though the word count is longer – produce a 50,000 word rough draft of a novel in 30 days. That’s 1666 words a day. Every single day. Weekends included.  Unless you want to take weekends off. In that case, you’ll need to write about 2500 words a day for the next four weeks.

A lot of people sign up for these things. Some people do it every year. A few people I know do both NaNoWriMo and PiBoldMo.   Somewhere in there they find the time to go on social media and post about ideas generated or daily word counts.  And to congratulate or post encouragement to others too.

It’s all good. Really, it is. But, honestly, it makes me tired just thinking about it. And leaves me feeling vaguely guilty. I average 1000 – 1200 words a day four or five days a week. Weekends are for chores, for groceries, for meal planning and all that good stuff.  Even if I intend to write on weekends, I rarely do, though I’ll often find myself mulling a character, a plot twist, or an upcoming scene.

I’d like to change that. For one, I have a novel that’s almost done, and another one to start and finish by March 2015. I have a major feature due at the beginning of December too.  So this November, I’d like to up my productivity and boost my idea quotient. I’d like to clean out my in box and clean off the top of my desk. Hit the gym, stop eating wheat and do 100 push ups every day. Finish my Christmas shopping. And maybe finish the needlepoint that’s been sitting in the closet since 2008 too. In other words, I’d like to kill the month of November.

Just call me LeMeWriMa or Lean Mean Writing Machine.  Or, if you’d rather, go with the pros and check out these sites: http://taralazar.com/piboidmo/     and http://nanowrimo.org/