NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month, and I'm participating in it this year thanks to the encouragement of my good friend and fellow writing enthusiast, Ben Arnold. Essentially, it's a sort of competition (or challenge, really) that was started something like seven years ago where you try to write a novel of about 50,000 words (about 120 pages) in the month of November. It starts at 12:00 a.m. on November 1st and ends at 11:59 p.m. on November 30th. The idea is to just sit down and write and to learn to squelch your inner editor, so you can actually write the whole damn story and not stop yourself out of frustration with the inadequacy of the story. There aren't really prizes per se, just certificates for those who succesfully write a 50,000-word story, but as I said, the whole point is sort of the learning process of writing through to the end, the discipline to make yourself sit down and write every day and not get so flustered that you quit writing. So, Ben and I are trying it this year. I've done some outlining for what I want to write, and can't wait for November 1st to come around so I can start putting words on paper. Also, I've added a sort of mini-blog per Ben's invitation, which I have linked on the top right of the page. Feel free to come around in November for updates on how I'm doing, and offer any encouragement you possibly can. I'm terrible at making myself write through what I believe to be crap writing, so I'm going to need all the encouragement I can get.