AcBoWriMo: Academic Book Writing Month

I was just thinking yesterday about how something like NaNoWriMo was cool, but really not the writing I needed to be doing. (I routinely write the first chapter of a novel just to get it out of me. Chapter 2 usually proves to be more of a problem). Lo and behold, ProfHacker posted about Charlotte Frost’s idea to do AcBoWriMo, where you write an academic book in a month–with, of course, the caveat that academic writing is far different than novel writing. “[B]ut aren’t you just a little bit curious to know how much of a kick-start a dedicated writing month could give your book?” she asks.

So in the spirit of fun and GTD, I am going to give it a shot. Plus I just joined a faculty writing group at Dominican, so I am in the mindset of improving the volume and quality of my writing. I am thinking  500 words a day is totally doable, but to get to the full 50,000 words in a 30 day month requires 1,666 words a day.  Considering that it’s already November 2, this may be challenging. Plus I don’t have any projects that require quite that length in the pipeline. I do have several shorter projects due in November, plus a number of longer projects partially completed. So rather than planning to “do things over winter break” (hahahahahhaha), it’s not a bad idea to just suffer through November and enjoy more of December for fun, as several people have pointed out.

In November I have 750 words worth of writing due to two different publications, a white paper that needs to happen soon, and two articles I would like to at least draft (both are outlined already). That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 words. Not to mention I could always blog more! So let’s say 20,000 words to be generous. That’s 666 words a day. I have written 600 words for a book review draft (it’s pretty rough yet), and this blog post will end up being about 400 words. So that’s 1,000 words. I feel like that’s cheating, but then again, it’s not nothing!

Anyone else participating in any of these “write such and such many words of…” memes? Do other people accomplish things in different ways? Or are writing groups the only way to do it?

Writing Progress Chart