It's NaNo time!
Next Monday I will begin the attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). To give you an example of how long this is, The Jungle Book (unabridged) is approximately 51,000 words long. Or 50,000 words are almost 85 single spaced, 1 inch margins, 12 point text pages in Word. Wheeeeee!
The first question most people ask is: Why!?!? Why not? *shrugs* Have you ever said "I'd like to write a novel someday"? Well your someday is November. The whole month even, we won't make you write it in a day. *winks*
Second it's fun. The NaNo community forums are one of the friendliest best places on the net. Young and old from every walk of life come to write novels on every subject imaginable. We all share one thing: the love of writing. And maybe a strong streak of insanity.
Will my novel be published? More than likely not. NaNo does not publish any of the novels, they don't even read them. They have a computer program to count the words in a text file you send to verify your "win" and that's it. A few writers have had their novels published however. Most people (like me) just do it for themselves.
Serious writers should apply. There are a few published writers who do NaNo every year to get a jump start on a novel. The writing process can sometimes be slow, like a trickle from a leaky faucet. NaNo writing is more like the burst of water from a fire hose. You just spill words and ideas onto paper. There's always NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) in March to sort it all out later. hehe
My plot this year? I think I'm going with a historical romance, heavy on the historical, light on the romance (*ahem* That's what I keep telling myself, we'll see). Set during the Civil War, the heroine will be the daughter of a rich Cincinnati businessman. By night, she helps slaves escape across the Ohio River. The guy will be a Confederate soldier stationed in northern Kentucky/Cincinnati. Except he's really a Union soldier undercover but she doesn't find this out for quite awhile. See all the fun plot twists and turns? This is a bit of a change from my usual fantasy novel writing but this idea and characters have been running through my head for a few years now. Time to get them out and let them live their lives on paper (actually an electronic Word file. Whatever...).
So what you can expect from me for the next month are updates of the word count, a few novel excerpts (no guarantees on proper grammar, I'm the queen of run-on sentences), and maybe a bit less blogging. *cringes* It takes me one to two hours to pound out 2,000 words (my daily goal) so that means that much less time for bloggie stuff. But as always, we'll see. Maybe my writing muse will be good to me and the kids will learn to feed, clean, & clothe themselves while keeping the house bright and shiny. There's got to be something to say about eternal optimism. *winks*
Quote of the Day: "The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum." -Havelock Ellis
Edit (as suggested by Greg):This is my 3rd year of NaNo. In 2002, I managed 35,000 words before Kelly was born on the 14th. That kinda threw off my writing groove. haha Last year, I won with 51,377 words. Woohoo! Come on, November!
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