National Novel Writing Month

Quote of the Day: "There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write." - W. M. Thackeray

Up until about half an hour ago, I had no idea what National Novel Writing Month was (that's NaNoWriMo for short). Thanks to one of my favorite authors, J. T. Ellison, I now know exactly what it is, and I'm pretty excited about it.

Yesterday, I mentioned my personal "November Challenge" that focuses on being healthy. This NaNoWriMo stuff is kind of like a writing challenge of the same ilk. Ellison calls it "a 30-day, 50,000 word sprint that aims to help you develop the habit of sitting down at the computer every day and mindfully writing a novel."

This couldn't come at a better time for me. As many of you know, I began working on a novel last year or. Several things happened that I let stand in the way of working on said novel, even after devouring Stephen King's On Writing and promising myself I would write 1,000 words a day for three months. Lately, I've been doing better with writing, but it's still not an everyday thing. It's more of a once or twice a week I settle into bed at 1 am and write until the sun comes up kind of thing. This usually results in anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 words being added to my little story.

Anyway, I need to get this thing finished before I lose sight of my goal, and truth be told, I'm so very close. As a matter of fact, I don't even have enough left to write to get to 50,000 words this month. Either way, I'm going to take the the opportunity to make myself work on it every day. Once I'm finished with the story, I know there will be lots of editing and revising, so, yeah, that's my plan for NaNoWriMo.