NaNoWriMo 2006 - Writers Sharpen Your Pencils!

Fall is here indeed. The leaves are turning colors, the kids are getting their Halloween costumes together and plans are being made for just how many pumpkin pies need to be made for Thanksgiving.

And around our house it means one more thing; National Novel Writing Month is almost upon us. For those who don't recall my NaNoWriMo adventure from last year or who are unfamiliar with this event on the whole let me explain. NaNoWriMo is a month long writing frenzy by mostly amateur writers to try and write a novel in just 30 days. A novel is defined in this case as 50,000 words. This 2000 word per day pace is achieved by locking away one's inner critic and just dumping as many words on the page as possible. For more details about the event itself visit their website.

I participated in NaNoWriMo last year and won; that is to say I passed the 50K mark before the end of the month. So when October 1 rolled around this year I signed up to do a second tour of duty in November and this time I've dragged a fellow writer along with me.

I don't want to call them out just yet since I don't know that they've told anyone but me that they're going to participate. Once I see a public admission on their website to signing up for this year's 50,000 word death march I'll give them a mention here.

Since this will be my second pass at trying to write a novel in a month I've had the opportunity to ponder some on lessons learned from last year's experience. I've spent the intervening year doing a lot more writing than I have in the past and while I didn't reach my goal of getting at least one story out for submission I did do plenty to hone my craft some. Namely I've learned to house break my internal editor. Now he mostly sits on his hands in the corner when I write until I release him to clean up the messes I've made on the page. Oh sure, he fidgets, squirms and whimpers while I'm writing; wanting to kibitz but I'll toss him a powerpoint presentation from my day job (no shortage of those) to work on for a while and that usually quiets him down.

I'm still working on what this year's novel is going to be about. Last year I took a short cut and did a retelling of the Book of Ruth (from The Bible). It afforded me with a plot, characters and motive. All I had to do was put it in a new setting, give it some color and throw in some dialog. It's not a bad way to write a book and many authors have made entire careers on doing that. But this year I think I'm going to take a different approach.

I've had a few story ideas I've been chewing on for a while. One it just not neatly enough to last for 50,000 words; it's short story material for sure. Another plot idea I have I've been thinking about too much. That is to say I'm too wed to the story to toss it to the wolves of wild writing in November. I know that in the ned the only way that story is going to make it to the page is for me to just let it go and see what happens what I start typing, but not yet.

One other plot came to me a few weeks ago and I think this is the one I'm gong to use. I've put just enough thought in to it so as to not feel unprepared to turn it in to a novel but not so much that I couldn't stand to see it fail.

More NaNoWriMo updates as they become available.