With Reckless Abandon

While November is often a time for scarves and Mom's stuffing, it means something else to me. Because November 1 officially begins NaNoWriMo - or National Novel Writing Month. This fantastically fun month is a challenge to every procrastinating writer out there to write a novel in a month.

In a month?
That's correct.

The goal is to hit 50,000 words by the end of the month. There are no prizes or anything like that. No one keeps tabs on you (although you are encouraged to keep tabs on yourself and commiserate with other participants). You aren't allowed to begin writing until midnight of Nov. 1, although character sketches or plot outlines ahead of time are allowed.

You aren't allowed to edit or rewrite what you've written. The goal is just to get the words out - no matter how awful they may be. To turn off that internal editor and just keep going. Because everyone who wants to write assumes that "some day" you will - and it never really happens. No one is going to hand me a six month sabbatical in a beautiful thatched roof cottage somewhere (somehow I've always envisioned my writerly self penning masterpieces - or really marketable stuff - under thatched eaves). So on my lunch breaks, in those precious evening hours after work, I'm brushing off the handle to that little door called imagination and entering another world.

All that to say the blog may suffer a bit in November.