NaNoWriMo

This year I've decided that since I have some time on my hands, I will attempt to participate in National Novel Writing Month, or as it is commonly referred to, NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano). It's an annual challenge to set out and write a fifty thousand word novel in the thirty days of November. Other members of my family have been at this for ten years now, but I have resisted being sucked in to this point because one, I judged I never had the time, what with working 45 to 60 hours a week and commuting for another 15 to 18 hours a week; and two, when I write, I write slowly.

I have in fact already written a novel. It's called Stained Glass and it is available from Lulu Press (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/stained-glass/975721). Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.  That book is a tad over fifty thousand words, but it took me more than two years to write it.

NaNoWriMo is not about producing works of art, even if that may occasionally happen. It is about forcing yourself to write, loosening yourself up and getting over all those preconceptions you have about not being able to write. It's about spending thirty days hammering away just to prove to yourself and the rest of the world that you can do it. You then have the rest of your life to write your masterpiece.

So starting tomorrow, I'll be pounding away at the keyboard churning out an epic work called...actually I don't have a title yet. I have an idea: I know where the story starts, a fuzzy idea for an ending, and not really much in the way of a middle, but I'm not worried about that. I have always found that a story almost always goes where it wants to anyway. I just follow it along as it unfolds.

Wish me luck, and I certainly wish good writing to all the participants in this years NaNo. We're all a bit crazy, but hey, that's sometimes the way genius is born.