K and I are going to give National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) a try this year. It goes something like this: starting on November 1st, each of us has to write a 50,000-word (175-page) novel by midnight on November 30th. It’s not as crazy as it sounds; hordes of people finish every year, mostly by lowering their expectations from ‘bestseller’ to ‘will not make someone vomit’ (in the words of one of the organizers).
You can follow our progress along the way by visiting our NaNoWriMo pages; a handy pair of links is included in the sidebar here. I’m not sure exactly what they’ll contain, but at the very least it’ll include up-to-date word counts. If you decide (due to some mad urge) to join us and write a novel of your own, let me know your author URL and I’ll add it to the links.
And yes, I’m totally batshit crazy for doing this. I’ll try to blog during the process, but after writing 6 pages each day I doubt I’ll have time.
If you’re smart, you’ll start taking some notes and make an outline now. That doesn’t count as “writing” but rather, “pre-writing planning.”
p.s. You GO!
Yes, I think that’s what the NaNoWriMo veterans call “Planning October”. :) We have 10 days or so to get some serious character backstory and a bit of plot outline. I’m going to try to avoid much plotting beforehand, because I hear that can really slow down the process. Volume!
Drat. I’m in, darn you all to heck. I do NOT have time for this, but I can’t resist being challenged! Grrrrrr………..
Deana: Yaaaaay! I’ve added you to the sidebar on the home page… Good luck!
Yay yay Deana! See, at least you have a title. I don’t have a title. And I am way impressed by Mystery/Suspense. I’ve always thought that would be the most difficult genre to attempt. Seriously. Wow.
It comes from watching lots and lots of Hart to Hart lately. And being on a honeymoon in New Mexico….
I may regret this though. Sigh.
I’m in I’m in! :D No outline, no problem. Good luck! It’s cool that you have a Nano buddy locally. I don’t know what I would do if my husband decided to do it though — I need him to help me with my kids while November is driving me crazy!
Oh… my username is TinyBites on the Nano site, in case you want to stop in and peek at my status bar.