Gearing Up for NaNoWriMo

Sam and his son, the future NaNoWriMo writer, David.

I think it all started in 2003 when my friend Sam Hallgren sent me a NaNoWriMo tee shirt. I was reminded of this when I saw a new interview with Sam on the NaNoWriMo Blog today.

I was in grad school when Sam hipped me to NaNoWriMo (which stands for National Novel Writing Month) and I dove into the challenge of producing a full 50,000 word piece of unedited, mostly stream-of-consciousness fiction within the 30 days of November. I did it and wore that tee shirt with pride until the seams literally came apart. In fact, I remember wearing it the day I handed in my thesis.

The next year I did the NaNo again, finishing something even better, although still bad, that my sister read and found offensive (because the “fiction” wasn’t always all made up). My life as a marathon novelist was going great.

I made it only half-way through in 2006 before my time cramped up and I had to drop out. I’d had to skip the year before altogether what with starting Greenjeans and the wedding and all.

However, my character in 2006 has stayed with me ever since I dreamed her up in the days preceding the start of the challenge, November 1, 2006.

Three years later, although I’m busy as hell and already on the computer all day, I’m dying to know what this character is about and what she’s doing, and so I’m feeling compelled to log in and NaNoWriMo again. Besides, Sam’s doing it again too, and he has a kid, so what’s my excuse?

I am allowing myself a caveat: I’ve decided to do a half-NaNo this year, shooting for 25,000 words and FINISHING my story instead of starting afresh and going for 50k.

Maybe I’ll post some excerpts here as I go along… maybe that’s what Found Curve is for… (’cause I’m still searching…)

Anyone else out there taking on the NaNoWriMo challenge this year?

Tags: nanowrimo writing