Hello everyone! Welcome back to another month of Bookish Debates! November can be a busy time for writers as people get settled into Nano and other binge-writing challenges. Did you know that Dreamland runs its own writing event in November? Well, now you do! It's called DANM (Dream a Novel Month). 

On theme with this month, we asked our dreamers for their thoughts on the atmosphere that writing challenges like DANM creates. Read on to hear what our Dreamers had to say! 

Note: As always, we welcome everyone to share additional thoughts in the comments!

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Questions posted on 11th November 2024 

For Writers: How is your DANM challenge going? What does your goal look like, and what are you hoping to accomplish? What are your favorite strategies for accomplishing large chunks of word-count in a limited amount of time? How do you keep yourself accountable? Most importantly, do you think writing challenges like DANM, and the community support with it, helps you get your creativity flowing, and how so? Or does having this pressure make you shut down and not be able to accomplish anything? What can you do to overcome it?Lots of questions, but they're really just food for thought. Feel free to answer as many or as few as you like! As this is a debate, you're also welcome to converse with your fellow writers, commenting on why their experiences may or may not work for/relate with you. 

For Readers: As we know some of you may not be participating, or not big on writing in itself (and even if you are, feel free to comment on these questions too!), we want to get your thoughts on the works produced by your favorite authors during writing challenges like these. What do you think of them so far, who's projects are you most excited for, and what do you like most about seeing a story in its early form—before it grows and evolves with more drafts and edits?

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All answers are slightly modified for grammar and structure.

Winning answer posted by avadel 

My writing journey is a roller-coaster from highs of love for what I've done to lows of despair. It's really tempting when hitting those low points to want to quit. Challenges like DANM force me to keep going and start the climb to my next part that I enjoy. It makes sure the story gets an end. Also, compressing that roller-coaster cycle into a month, while exhausting, also helps keep me from dragging the roller-coaster out, which can be even more upsetting. Plus, at the end of the month, you have way more words than you thought you could, and so whether or not you win, you've made progress, and that's a win in and of itself.

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That's all for now! We appreciate all that those took a moment out of their lives to participate in this discussion and congratulations once again to Laine for winning!