National Novel Writing Month, sks NaNoWriMo

Did it -- signed up for NaNoWriMo. I'm very jealous of my time although my days are my own. As everyone knows nature abhors a vacuum -- which is partly why Tantric meditation is SO hard. That's a different matter -- sheer everyday life abhors a vacuum and I'm very, very good at filling it with a ton of things I want and love to do.

NaNoWriMo is a month, i.e., November, during which the participants -- there's an official website and enrollment and daily tabulation, etc., etc. with worldwide participation -- attempt to write a novel, or something that could be shaped into a novel, of 50,000 words in the month of November. The word count is not particularly daunting, it's the time element that is a crunch -- goodbye to most quilting, lots of reading. Never mind the very avoidable housekeeping, I'm good at ignoring that. When I was asked if I was going to do it, my first answer was no. But I thought of a novel begun probably 10, 12 years ago, maybe more. Situation, conflict, setting, a couple of characters fairly well formed in my head. I stopped back then partly because I thought it was not marketable: the subject is the fate of a collection of quilts. Who cared? But in the interim books about quilters or featuring quilts have become a kind of sub-genre, a couple of publishing houses understand the market. There's hope of a sale.

So I signed up and will see how far I get. I'm sure the whole thing will be more than 50,000. Of course a first draft is only that, but it must be done and probably much will be usable. So as of Sunday I'll get started. Daily word count is reported.

There are regional groups, one of which met last night at the local Borders -- 12 or 15 enthusiastic 20-30 somethings, bright and fun oriented. Writing games, an attempt at espirit de corps. Okay, but not my kind of thing. Planned "write ins" -- I have never written with other people and don't want to, don't need that. Tend to feel that "real" writing is not a team sport. One does it as a part of one's life or not. Only a few do. From things I've read about NaNo -- it serves to some extent to weed out the wannabes who think there's glamor in writing from those who just know they will write and soon realize it's not glamorous.

Anyway I've committed myself and I'll do it, not truly feeling pressure to write approximately 2,000 words a day but, Geewhiz, that's not many words. I write that many words many days. Anyway, posts may be a bit fewer during November. It's a matter of so many hours in a day and I will not give up reading (books and blogs) or walking and have various other commitments.