Happy Halloween!
I decided early last week that I’m committing to NaNoWriMo 2.0, but with The Taper Caper Twist. More on that in a minute. So, I spent a lot of last week trying to wrap up other writing projects to make drafting my Leah Novel easier. I fought technology all morning yesterday and didn’t win, so with the exception of my newsletter not going out before NaNo, I feel pretty good about what I got done.
After exercising this morning and drinking my protein shake outside in the ~50-degree morning air, making small talk with Ant, I headed back inside for my writing community’s Taper Caper Challenge Kick-off call.
What is The Taper Caper?
Two of our writing coaches in Quill & Cup came up with this challenge: to still draft but it naturally tapers off as our excitement for the challenge inevitably tapers off as well. As is typical of Quill & Cup, we have two options to choose from: Word Count Challenge and Day Count Challenge.
- Word Count Goal- Writer 5 days a week, but your daily word count goal tapers each week. Ex. If you total Word Count Goal for Week 1 is 1,000, then for Week 2, multipy by 0.8 to get your new word count goal for, etc.
- Day Count Goal – Week 1 can be five days, then Week 2 would be four days, Week 3 three days, etc.
My Goal for November 2026
My so-far draft of my Leah Novel is already at 110,700. For a Contemporary Young Adult. Contemporary YA novels are not typically this long. Granted, this delightfully messy first draft does include scene titles and massive notes to myself (which I haven’t separated out in awhile). And I haven’t drafted this particular story since this past July, so I’m easing back into it. Still with a word count goal at seven days a week.
My total word count goal for the month: 10,330. That breaks down like this:
- Week 1’s goal (Nov. 1st-7th): 3,500 words total = 500 words/day
- Week 2’s goal (Nov. 8th-14th): 2,800 total = 400 words/day
- Week 3’s goal (Nov. 15th-21st): 2,240 = 320 words/day
- Week 4’s goal (Nov. 22nd-28th): 1,790 = 256 words/day
Why also NaNo 2.0?
NaNo (short for National Novel Writing Month) 2.0 is what a small team of volunteers created when the OG NaNO organization closed it’s doors in the spring of 2025. So, last November was NaNo 2.0’s first run.
I have participated in NaNoWriMo on and off since 2012, including Camp NaNo, and winning in the traditional sense of writing 50,000+ words, in 2015 and then again in 2022. I will always love this idea. And I do love that it’s back in its own way. Also, it’s why November always feels like drafting to me.
Who’s Leah again?
So glad you asked!
Leah has come so far since the early days of Camp NaNoWriMo 2016 (TEN YEARS!!!) We both have.
Here’s the working synopsis I have:
These Things Called Humans explores life as high school ends and the “real world” begins. Having been involved in Future Farmers of America (FFA) her entire high school career, Leah thought she knew who she was and what she wanted. Now, a month out from graduation, Leah is already learning that some friends don’t stick around and that her new summer job at the coffee and board game shop isn’t the only way to cure heartbreak.
Leah finds friends in co-workers, Kim and Liam, who remind her that there is so much joy in living life. She also meets Aiden, a frequent patron of the coffee and board game shop, who broadens her view of what being a nerd is. (Everyone’s nerdy about something, right?)
Leah starts to define herself outside of her high school peers and starts to see people as more than their cliques. She learns what it means to be liked for who you are and, more importantly, to like who you are, as a human and not a label.
Over the Christmas holiday last year, I finally wrote the scene I’d been avoiding. And then in early July, when I dropped my summer class (it was for a job I had at the time), I added 4,000 words to the document. And a surprise moment happened that I wasn’t expecting. If I keep it, it means I’ve gotta dig for a deeper conflict, which is a good problem to have; I just gotta figure out what it is.
Writing Game Plan
At the very minimum, write my daily word count goal on the midnight prickles (the write-in time slot at 8:30pm PST) with my writing community Sunday through most Thursdays from 8:30pm-9:30pm. But I also do enjoy writing Monday through Thursday at 4pm, so I may take it as a bonus time to work on my Leah Novel or use the time to finish a combined Summer and Fall 2026 reads blog post orrrr figure out the picture techonoly drama for my combined Sept/Oct 2026 Postcard newsletter.
I’m hoping I can write to the ending of this story this month, but I don’t really know the ending, so we’ll just see where the month takes me.
I just know this story is one of my heart and I go into this month with lots of deep breaths. And, I’m not going alone. God’s got this. 10,330 words or not. I’m walking by faith in writing this story.
If you’d like to follow along, I’m thinking about doing the check-in update posts in my Instagram stories, so follow along there! And I may write the occasional update blog post, like a did a few years ago, so watch this space if you like long-form content better.
But before the drafting officially begins…
Here’s to Halloween and cute kids’ costumes, to your own creative costumes, horror movies or cozy ones, game nights, or however else you chose to celebrate or not. Enjoy your Saturday. If you’re also NaNo-ing or participating in another November Writing Challenge (because there are quite a few options now), let me so I can follow along too. Writing is best done in community 🙂
P.S. If you’re interested in the Quill & Cup writing community, email me at tracyerler[dot]writer[at]gmail[dot]com. I’ll share more about it and we can talk about a potential trial week 🙂
