Well, NaNoWriMo is just around the corner and I'm not sure what to think. This is my first year officially doing it, and I'm a little freaked out. In the past I had always tried doing it on my own without signing up, but it never happened. Either I forgot by the time that November 1st rolled around, or I just didn't care enough to try.

So, you can imagine my surprise when, back in August - of all times - I had the feeling deep down inside that maybe I could do it this year, and officially at that. Okay, I said to myself, you feel like this now, but what'll happen in a couple of months when it comes down to crunch time? Are you gonna balk again and not follow through, or will the feeling have passed and morphed into the same 'sit back and laugh at the craziness of everyone else you know who's doing it' attitude?

Well, I replied to myself in September, I know a way we can find out. Let's sign up for the NaNo-Reminder, so they'll send us an email when sign-ups start in October! If we forget and the email comes as a shock, then we know exactly where we stand.

Turns out I ended up signing up as soon as my other friends started talking about it, and I hadn't even gotten the reminder email yet! So I s'pose I have my answer.

I now have the accountability, no matter how slight, to my friends and to the nice folks who run NaNoWriMo. I have the encouragement of those who have openly admitted to not "winning" in previous years, so I have nothing to fear, should I not make my goal.

Add to this the fact that my friend in New Brunswick is getting married, and I have a really tight schedule for writing, indeed!

For those wondering, or those who haven't clicked on the link yet, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It is the crazed attempt by an individual to write down 50,000 words in 30 days, no matter how bad the story is. It is an exercise of shutting off the internal-editor and typing until your fingers fall off.

I have calculated that one would need to write approximately 2,000 words a day to accomplish this, which not only meets, but exceeds the 50,000 requirement. The actual number is about 1,700+ or 1,800 to be safe. I know I can do about 1,000 words in an hour or so if I'm not distracted and I can get myself into the story.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I'll be heading off to New Brunswick in the middle of November, which means that I have to add an extra 1K to my total words/day the week before and the week after to make my goal by midnight on November 30th.

...I have faith, though. I have some semblance of a plot idea, and a bunch of characters that have been claiming that they're ready to help me out with this.

Here's hoping, though, because these guys have kept me waiting on plot-points for over six-months or longer in the past, and we won't have time for that sort of silliness.

Hopefully I'll pop in here after my writing time each day and update you guys on where I stand in my daily and monthly goals, because this is a process that is to be shared and lived through vicariously. Goodness knows that the folks I live with here in Real Life will be getting the ugly end of this. Only stands to reason that you guys get the better end of the deal.

So! Stay tuned for novel excerpts, word counts, and other sundry as I prep and participate in the annual insanity that is NaNoWriMo!

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P.S. For those of you wondering, the above entry is about 639 words and took me about 10 - 20 minutes to type up. So, while 2K/day is a high aim, it's pretty do-able. Like I said, I have faith!

Hey Nic good to see you back and good luck with the writing. It's all most that time again to exchange Christmas cards for year #3 my address is the same is yours? Will be doing a post soon for anyone that wants a card from the DangerZone thanks for the music I've been looking for that i had it once but lost it. Now i need to figure out how to put it on the site again. Let me know about the address!!

NIC! Nice to see you back my friend and it sounds like youve got your work cut out for you! Its amazing how many Bravenetters get into NaNoWriMo - there are two that I frequently visit - Cathi and Claire ... maybe the three of you could help encourage each other!

Either way I look forward to reading YOUR entry!

Take care and again its nice to see ya back!

W

Yes! This will be my 3rd Nanowrimo and it's a matter of trying to do some every day and if you can't an all out writing binge each weekend. I have links to my previous years' entries on the home page of my web page if you want to read them. Last year's is a full fledged novella that I do plan to publish (thinking LuLu.com) and the other is a novel that only just had gotten started when I got my 50k words and is still haunting me. I'm thinking of finishing that for this one. Who knows? Other lightening bolts may hit when the time comes.

Signing up is a good thing - you can track your words by uploading, link to friends doing Nano, go on forums ... all good stuff.