Well its that time of year again. I don't know if you have ever heard of 'National Writing Month' but there is one, and it's in November, and there is a thing dubbed NaNoWriMo which issues the yearly challenge:- starting November 1st, write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30th. To quote them -
"The ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down."
I've done this twice now. My first attempt resulted in a 60k novel about a post apocolytic nightmare in which a sword weiling unisex female gets imprisoned in an obscure village and has to get herself out (it was crap - even my Mother couldn't say anything good about it). My second attempt resulted in a period drama which I completed with 50k but was equally awful and subsequently binned in disgust.
This year I was going to ignore it, but a friend is planning to have a go with a novel about [editted because they'll probably sue me if I disclose it] and now I've got the itch. I've got a choice, I can either use this to finish my 3rd novel about a [editted because I still might stand a chance of publishing this - early proofreading has resulted in favourable response] which I never finished...or write a completely different novel about a [editted because I might stand a chance of publishing this too]...akin to The Shining only on a desert island... The only thing is, I had a quiet warm up practise at the start of this month and attempted to do the required 1666 words per day required and I failed miserably so I'm a bit worried about signing up now. Then again, even if I only do 20k of words or something if it will get my ass back into gear that can't be bad. And if my friend gets famous from his attempt I'll really be peed off. And its a cheap hobby it has to be said - its either write novels all weekend or hand around in garden centres buying useless things for my new greenhouse.
What do you reckon...? Should I dare do it?
