Since I have been doing almost no writing at all lately, I’ve decided to give NaNoWriMo a try this year. This will be my first try. For those of you who don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, it’s essentially a “challenge” to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Lots of people do this. It’s the writer’s version of running a marathon, I suppose.
I have created a profile on the NaNoWriMo website, and those who wish to follow along, feel free. The challenge is for the month of November. There are 30 days in November, which means if I am to complete the challenge, I need at least 50,000 words by the end of the day on November 30. That’s an average of 1,667 words/day, every day. For those used to pages, that’s roughly 7 double-spaced pages per day.
I have an idea for the novel. In fact, I am expanding a novella that I wrote last year. Earlier this year, I talked about expanding it, and I even managed to complete an outline. But I never got to it. The working title of the novel is Graveyard Shift. It is a science fiction story set several thousand years in the future, at a time when virtual worlds and quantum computers have made death more or less obsolete. After thousands of years of relative peace, someone is trying to destroy these virtual worlds and the novel is the story of 5 people who come together to prevent this from happening. While the novella is 20,000 words, I’m working more from the outline than the novella, so in a sense, I am starting from scratch.
I’m toying with the idea of posting excerpts as “friends-only” posts as I go along so that friends and family can actually read what I am writing as I go along. But I do this with some trepidation. What I would be posting is first draft material and will likely go through significant revisions later on. It might read terrible in first draft. It might not make sense in places. That’s the danger of posting a first draft. But I’ll think about it.
The challenge begins on November 1. I know that pussreboots is giving it a shot this year. I don’t know if mabfan has decided to try this year yet.
To everyone who is taking the challenge: good luck!
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