NaNoWriMo

This year, for the first time ever, I am going to be participating in National Novel Writing Month. In fact, I've never written a novel before. But a few years ago, my very first semester of graduate school, I was sitting by the lake with my classmates. We were playing a game "who will be the first" where you basically chose different achievements (or failures) and decided who in the group would be the first to do it. The first to publish a book came up, and I was quite shocked when they unanimously chose me. Maybe a fiction book isn't want they have in mind, but I like the idea.

Logo via NaNoWriMo 

As for what exactly I'm going to write, I haven't decided yet. I have a number of thoughts floating around, and my goal for the rest of October is to decide on a likely one, lay out some background and figure out my characters so when I'm ready to I can jump write in. In order to stay on track for a 50,000 word novel, I'll need to write an average of 1,667 words each day for the month of November. The goal is to have a good draft completed by the end of the month.

I'm really looking forward to this. I've been talking about writing a novel for years now, but have never really taken any steps towards making it happen. I may be really terrible at fiction writing, but at least this is a chance for me to actually find out! I'll write more about some of my ideas as I do more over the next couple of weeks to solidify which story I want to tell.