NaNoWriMo

I woke up this morning and decided that I am going to participate in NaNoWriMo. No Idea why, but writing was the first thing on my mind when I woke up. Well, second thing… I needed a glass of water. I average a gallon of water a day and if I don’t have a glass before bed I wake up dying of thirst. A friend of mine actually warned me about this. I was planning on increasing my water intake and he told me that he basically became addicted to water after increasing the amount that he drank. I kid you not, I am now addicted to drinking water. It’s a problem. But not the problem that I wanted to talk about today, sorry, I got side tracked. So, the second thing on my mind this morning, NaNoWriMo.

For National Novel Writing Month, which is November, writers try to start and finish writing a novel in a month. A fifty thousand word novel. In a month. That’s a five, with a zero, then a comma, and three more zero’s behind it. That would be a pretty big feat for this guy, especially considering that the longest thing that I have finished to date is probably somewhere around fifteen thousand words. That’s a complete guess, to be honest it could be ten thousand, it could be twenty thousand, I don’t know. I used to have a bad habit of throwing my writing projects away after finishing them.

So, here I am, preparing to embark on one of my biggest writing quests to date. I’ve mentioned before that I was in the midst of writing a book. I’m not going to use that idea for nanowrimo. I need a break from that book and nanowrimo is going to be a great change of pace for me. A HUGE change of pace. Now, I’m not delusional here. I know that the majority of people that try this do not succeed. I know that my chances of succeeding in this are kinda slim as well. But if I even get half of the book done, or if I end up with a twenty thousand word book instead I will still count that as a win… And as a goal to beat next year when I (hopefully) try it again.

My main goal is to complete a 20,000 word novella. Anything more than that I will be happy with. That’s basically 1,000 words a day, minus weekends, Thanksgiving, and my birthday. My only problem with that is making sure that I don’t get into the habit of bartering with myself. You know, doing the whole “well you wrote 1,500 yesterday so today you only need 500 words” (or vice versa) thing. I need to stay on track and commit to writing at least 1,000 words a day. But, what to write?

Well, I have a few ideas floating around in my head, but I figure that this project will eventually make its way onto my blog anyway… So I might as well give my readers the opportunity to decide what they would like to read. I am going to spend the rest of this month prepping for NaNoWriMo, and I am going to ask for your help.

The novel or novella or whatever I get will most likely come out as a series on my blog… What would you like to read about? Do you think I should expand on something from I write things (I actually have a couple more short stories that I’ll add to this later this week)? Should I write about my life? Maybe a recurring theme that you’ve seen (or not seen) in my blog? Or should I write about something that I briefly touched on or hinted at that you would like me to expand on? Or, do you have an idea about a specific genre that you think I should write about? Basically, what have you seen (or not seen) in my blog so far that you would be willing to read 20,000+ words about?

 

Until next time, let’s write.

P.S. I would love to find out if any of you are also participating in Nanowrimo… Have any of you done it before? Any advice (and/or encouragement) that you have for me would be much appreciated.