Happy Halloween everyone!!

While I get to spend the day crossing the country before spending the night with wine and … well more wine … I hope the rest of you get into some real wickedness and fun.  I hope you do, because come the morning, it will be November, and that means we are going head first into the winter ahead.  The long cold nights piled surrounding you with the seemingly endless snow and ice, until such time that you dread digging yourself out of your warm comforters to even start the next season of a show on Netflix.

Did that sound poetic enough for you?

Dangit.

Oh well, I was just trying to practice a little, because November means something else as well.

November is National Novel Writing Month – or for short:  NaNoWriMo.  No, it’s not one of those goofy causal month titles some politician came up with to pat themselves on the back; NaNoWriMo is actually an activity intended to bring out the best in writers around the world.  The concept is simple — during November, write a Novel.  Or more specifically, write 50,000 words towards your novel.  As most writers will tell you, the hard part isn’t coming up with the story, the hard part is getting it down on paper.  Once you have words, you can edit the hell out of it and make it something good.  NaNoWriMo follows that in very intense fashion.  50,000 words is a fair bit in 30 days, which equates to about 1700 words a day.  As a point of reference – this blog is usually around 600 words (heck I am only at 300 right now).  Whatever you write is going to be crap, the point is to gush as many words as possible with the effort to be around getting them out there, not letting them stay bottled up.

Because it is an activity meant to draw upon a community of writers and offer novel writing tools, NaNoWriMo is this month long event of people trying their best to come up with whatever they can come up during the next 30 days.  My schedule this year will mean I will miss nearly all the events, but there is usually a few write-ins, where you meet at one location and crank out as many words as you can in a short time.  In fact, there is a ‘Boston Marathon’, a 24-hour write in, which I floundered a part of last year.

So that leads to the real focus with this — I am making an attempt (my second) and NaNoWriMo this year.  Without sharing too much (or anything), the story I am using is based on some cross overs between ancient and modern mythology.  I’ve had the concept in my head for over the year, tested out some characters, and even went a few rounds of roughing out the idea with some fellow creatives.

Do I think I can do it?  Probably not.  I was well set up last year, but didn’t make it half way.  Got behind due to a massive cold, then work happened.  I will have considerable down time to make it happen this year, but it all depends on motivation and the creative spirit.  But we’ll see.  First word goes to paper tomorrow, and from there … who knows.