Losing My NaNoWriMo…

This November, I signed up to participate in NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month.

The premise?

Write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November.

It doesn’t have to be brilliant, it doesn’t have to be perfect; it’s about quantity, not quality. The act of writing and getting the words out there.

I’ve never had a huge urge to write a novel. I’ve never even attempted one. I’ve always been more focused on articles, or feature stories, or opinion pieces. Or starting magazines.

Novels are scary. They are big and require serious literary commitment. All that time, on the one subject. They involve creating characters. And stories. Plot.

I’ve never created an outline for anything. Not an essay or a business plan, let alone a novel. I don’t map things out.

So, what better way to get over all of that, to conquer those fears, than to pledge to write a novel, what will essentially be my first novel, or attempt at one, in 26 days*.

I signed up to NaNoWriMo because I want the challenge. I want to know what it is like – even a hint of what it is like – to work on something that doesn’t end after a few pages. And writing a novel in a month is a good timeframe for a commitment-phobic writer like myself**.

At the end of this month, I’ll report back and let you know how I went – what my word tally is, along with my verdict on the Sandi Sieger v. Novel Writing trial***.

*I haven’t started yet.

**I don’t even know if this is true, but I’ve always been somewhat afraid of starting a writing project that I knew I couldn’t comfortably complete.

***No, I will not be writing a crime-thriller. Although…