NaNoWriMo - I'm Gonna Do It

So in three hours, at midnight, National Novel Writing Month begins. I think I've decided to participate. The members of the Barnes & Noble writers group I attend have been talking about it since the first meeting I attended, and until just a few hours ago, I had no intention of taking part. It's going to be a bear to get through.

The way it works is you have until November 30th to write a 50,000 word novel. That averages out to 1667 words per day. On Microsoft Word, that translates to about three full pages per day. Every day. If I miss a day, that means I have to write six pages the next day. It's a tall task.

But... I know I can easily write that much every day. I wrote my Camp David treatment in six hours (from scratch) and that was 6500 words and 13 pages. So 1700 words a day shouldn't give me too much trouble.

The good thing about this is that ultimately, what I write doesn't matter. The whole point of this contest is not to write the next great American novel, or even a passable novel. It's just to get all of the hundreds of thousands of would-be novelists to get off their butts and WRITE something. At the end of the month, you won't have a masterpiece, but you WILL be able to say "I'm a novelist". "I have written something."

While I know that I have several dozen different projects going at the same time, and work, and on and on, I think more than anything, I NEED something like this to get me going.

A short while ago, Ryan and I talked briefly about what my novel will be about. I have a neat idea for a story that really works well with something like this contest. So we'll see....

I'll check back in later.