Anyone Else Planning on Doing NaNoWriMo Next Month?

posted by meowser

I am. First time.

For anyone who doesn’t know, NaNoWriMo means “National Novel Writing Month.” The idea is you sign up (here) and during the month of November, you knock out 50,000 words, which amounts to about 5 or 6 double-spaced pages a day on average. Most people don’t finish. But enough do that the tradition continues, and since I’ve had this book (young adult novel) in my head for almost a decade, and it’s been nagging at me more and more lately, this might be a good time to get it going for real.

I actually had a near-miss on a different YA novel about 12 years ago; I was a finalist in a publishing contest with a book contract as the prize, and they didn’t pick a winner that year (they reserve the right not to). I revised it, got some more rejections, decided the problems were too big for me to fix, and gave up. Then I started to do some work on this book, brought my first few pages to a new writing group, and they got chewed up like an inexperienced tiger tamer. They told me it was awful, it stunk, kids wouldn’t like it, etc. So once again, I gave up. I’m good at that.

But it didn’t give up on me. All these years. So maybe that’s a fat hint that it’s mine to do, regardless of how it turns out. I am not going to say anything more about it (or offer it up for criticism, unless I have a specific question or issue I need help with), until I’m done with a first draft. I know better now.

So during the month of November, this blog will be on official hiatus. If you are doing NaNo and want to buddy up, feel free to leave me a message or email me privately.