NaNoWriMo

The acronym for this event reminds me of the Nano Babies that were popular in gradeschool.  Actually, the Tamagotchis were the popular toy, Nano Babies were for those of us who couldn't afford the more stylish electronic pet.  Anyway.

November is National Novel Writing Month.  Fifty thousand words in 30 days.  As you may have already guessed, I signed up to participate last  week.

I am not in any shape to begin writing a novel today (who came up with Halloween, anyway?), but I must.  I signed up to participate and I like to think of myself as a non-welsher.  I have to complete 1,667 words per day to stay on track for the assignment.  For me, the hardest part of the whole exercise will be rule #2:

Do not edit as you go. Editing is for December. Think of November as an experiment in pure output. Even if it's hard at first, leave ugly prose and poorly written passages on the page to be cleaned up later. Your inner editor will be very grumpy about this, but your inner editor is a nitpicky jerk who foolishly believes that it is possible to write a brilliant first draft if you write it slowly enough. It isn't. Every book you've ever loved started out as a beautifully flawed first draft. In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you.

At least I have an idea for my story this time.  It's so hard for me to come up with ideas for my writing.  This one I actually thought I'd use for a short story, but since I do have such an awful time thinking up plots, I am going to see if I can't expand it into a novel.  Don't worry, I'm not cheating -- I have not started writing this story yet, I only have the idea.

So what say you?  Will you be joining me in this quest for authorship?  I've always wanted to write a novel, but never felt it was the right time.  But I've come to realize it's like having a Nano Baby: it's never the right time.  So I'm starting now.