It can be daunting to think of writing 50,000 words when you are faced with a completely blank page, and on the first day of NaNoWriMo that’s what we’ve all got.

Last year, many of the sprints and challenges that are up on the NaNoWriMo site helped me a lot, so I’ve created a little challenge game for us all to see if it will make it a little less painless to start.

We’re aiming for at least 1,667 words a day, so hopefully this will get us there quicker.

All you need is a die (or just the ability to choose a number randomly between 1 and 6 ) so let’s go…

Lizzie’s New Writer NaNoWriMo Challenge Starts Here

You’ve signed up and you’re really excited to start this year’s NaNoWriMo – write your first 100 words as quickly as you can.

If your name begins with the letters A – J, write 50 more words. K – R, write 75 more, and S – Z, 100 more.

You are desperate for a cup of coffee, but before you allow yourself to heat the water or turn on the machine, you must write solidly for 5 minutes and try to write 500 words. (It doesn’t matter if you don’t, just write as many as you can in 5 minutes.)

Time to take a breather (and get that coffee if you want!)

Roll a die and multiply what you get by 100. Write that many words.

Now you are well on your way, write up to the nearest 500 words without a break. (So if you were at 700, you would write another 300. If you were at 1200, you would also write 300 to go up to 1500)

If you’ve managed to get this far, you are over halfway to your daily number of words. Woohoo!

As a celebration, choose one of these three options –

• sprint 75 words without stopping
• roll a die and multiply by 50, then write that many words
• or write for 2 minutes without stopping

Now pat yourself on the back for being brilliant and write as many words as you can for 10 minutes.

If you haven’t written 1,667 words yet, then write until you do.

If you have reached 1,667 words you now have two choices. Jump up and down hysterically for a minute (after pressing save – not required if you are writing in longhand!), and/or carry on for a bit longer if you have more time allocated to this writing thing.

That’s it. You’ve completed a NaNoWriMo day’s writing. Easy, huh!

This is just a short one as I didn’t want to overwhelm you on your first day. If you fancy another one, or maybe one that’s a little bit longer I’ll try and do another when I can squeeze in the time.

Let me know in the comments how you’ve got on.