Subject: Thirty-seven days and counting!
Author:
Posted on: 2013-09-24 17:58:00 UTC
I am speaking, of course, of the glorious month of November, that shining, sleep-deprived, caffeinated, frantic scrabbling word-laden epoch we call interNational Novel Writing Month, when we all trade in our sanity (or what remains of it) for the pursuit of novel-writing, and the quest to put 50,000 words together in something resembling a novel in just 30 days.
In other/fewer words: it's NaNoWriMo!
Are you planning to do it this year? If so, do you have a plot? Or anything vaguely resembling a plan? Have you done it before? Have you ever won? Have you anything like words of wisdom or folly for those of us crazy enough to be throwing our hats in this year?
For my part, I'll be participating this year - it's been enough years that November would feel just a bit empty if I didn't. I managed to pull off the full fifty thousand for the first time last year, though the finished work was not something I'd bother committing to a physical page. This year, I've got a new plan involving the peaking and downfall of a pre- Ice Age civilization that evolves, or devolves, into the species we now know as crows.
I have, over the past five years or so of my life, become a follower of the writing advice of the inhumanly amazing Neil Gaiman, which usually boils down to this: keep writing, even when - especially when - it would be easier not to. This was his pep talk a few years back.
And, lastly, sorry I've not been around much. I was rather busy the past few weeks, then went back to the east coast to visit family, during which journey my laptop screen cracked. So I'll be trying to fix that, as well, in the next few weeks. I shall be intermittently poking about here and in the IRC in the meantime.
