NaNoWriMo Time Again

I need to sign up for NaNoWriMo again. Ugh.

I was about to write that the good news is, I have no plans for November this year, but I think I'm wrong. My best friend and his husband will be showing up to spend Thanksgiving with me and that's in November.

For those of you who weren't reading from last year, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It's an organization that encourages people to sign up, and then attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel within the month. It's crazy especially if you have a life or need to be inspired to write (like me) but its great excercise.

Two years now, I've participated and the results so far are The Three H Foundation, a work in progress but may soon be morphed into another tale and An Act of Balance another work in progress.

Instead of starting yet another novel (I've actually got another on the shelves, just never used it for NaNoWriMo), I think I'm going to go back to Act of Balance. It's a work of love and tribute to my mother and my family. The thing is, I need to be not pissed at them. Last year, my mother pissed me off so much on my birthday that I couldn't even think of her without ugly thoughts for months. But recently, my mother is different. It may be because of my sister's hospitalization; it may be other things. I think I can write generously of her again; I'll leave my grumblings of her to this blog.

The first year, I was able to achieve about 20,000 words before I gave up. Last year, only 7,000, partially because I had no idea where the story was going since I literally remembered NaNoWriMo on November 1st. The year before, I signed up around October 20th. This year, I have enough time, AND I have an outline program that I can use to organize thoughts. The next few days will be spent in organizing each chapter and the character/plot developments within.

It's so strange. I can easily write over 50,000 words on this blog in a month. But these are all separate thoughts, tied together by literally nothing. A novel however, you have to focus on characters, settings, tone, voice, rhythm, believability, development, conflicts, sub-plots, loose strings, etc.

Hokay then! Time to roll up the sleeves and get the mental fires going. With any luck, I won't get angry at my family during the month and will actually have a workable first draft by the end of the month.