National Novel Writing Month!

It’s that time of year again: pumpkin spice, Halloween costumes, and hanging out with friends in the fall weather. That last one might be difficult though, if you’re considering the other thing it’s time for: National Novel Writing Month. (NaNoWriMo means you will become a temporary hermit. In a good way.). Sure, it’s not until November, and we’ve got a good week or so, but if you want to make it all the way through November, you’d better start considering what your 50,000 words are going to be about, and how you’re going to manage to fit in enough time to write coherently for 30 days straight. When you think about it, it doesn’t sound like such an enormous undertaking. Writing every day. Meeting a word count. But if you’re anything like I was last year, you think plotting your story is a waste of time because, hey, it will just come to you as you go, and by the time you hit day 6 you realize that you’ve been ‘writing’ for hours (read: opening the document, thinking you need to research some stuff, and then spending the next three hours reading about geoducks and murder ballads), but your story hasn’t progressed—in word count or in action. And then you have the horrible realization that there are still 24 days to go and that if you can’t continue writing now, you will suffer the shame of having failed at your NaNo escapade after annoyingly trying to con all of your friends (and some strangers) into being your NaNoWriMo buddy by telling them how easy it will be.

And we just can’t have that.

So this year, plan on doing NaNoWriMo, and plan on winning. Continue your recruiting, but go out there with some weapons, like the official site itself (http://www.nanowrimo.org/), where you can register and track your progress against your friends’ and your region’s progress against any other part of the world. Check out local events, and read some of the pep talks by authors of all genres, like Maureen Johnson, Neil Gaiman, and Sara Gruen. Start thinking about your story, and prepare for a month of the most rewarding self-torture you’ll ever experience.

Who: You and some friends (hopefully)

What: National Novel Writing Month – 50,000 words by midnight, Nov. 30

Where: At your desk, in a closet, in a bouncy house castle, wherever

When: November (Yes, all of it.)

Why: Why not?

How: However you want (I work best with a full pot of coffee and a Costco-size bag of Swedish Fish and nonstop Christmas music. Maybe you work best in striped toe socks, snacking on Bugles in a soundproof band practice room. No one’s judging.)

I’ll be posting regularly on my NaNoWriMo experience, and I hope you’ll join me, because nobody likes to write alone. (A completely false statement. Still. We’ll be interacting online. Come on!)