It’s officially underway, the NaNoWriMo challenge. Not all people have heard of this. I mentioned it to my sister, who did say she’d heard of it but thought it was a conference. (It’s okay, Carrie. If I weren’t steeped in this whole writing culture, I wouldn’t know either.)
November. It’s not just about not shaving. It’s also National Novel Writing Month. (a.k.a., NaNoWriMo.)
Thousands of writers sign up on the official website, NaNoWriMo.org, and take the challenge to write 50,000 words during the month of November. This works out to about 2,000 words per day, if you take the Sabbath off. It all happens under the NaNoWriMo pretext: “The World Needs Your Novel.”
Now, I’m pretty sure the world does not NEEEEEED my novel. I am okay with that. It’s not like I’m Charles Dickens and making a thinly veiled social statement that will change the orphanage system in England–nor anything like unto it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I only write escapist fiction. The world doesn’t NEEEEEED it with all six capital Es. But maybe it needs it, with just two small ones.
Today I’m six days in, and I’m at word count. Probably tomorrow I’ll fall behind. And I’ll fall farther behind on Saturday and Sunday. That’s just how my life goes. My weekends belong to my family, Sundays to the Lord. Otherwise, I’d lose all balance.
But come Monday, I’m pretty sure I’ll be slapping out conflict, dialogue and characterization again–as much as I can. It’s pretty fun. I haven’t written a Young Adult novel in a while. My last release, the short story in the Strange and Lovely anthology last month got me thinking in a teen mindset again, so I decided to jump back in those waters. It’s really fun. I love it when writing is really fun.
Later, after NaNo, I’ll go back and edit the book I finished in October. And the book I was editing in September. And probably write a sequel to the October novel. And possibly rewrite something I wrote last September. And then I’ll edit this NaNo book, and then …
Life is too short to write all the stories I have in my head. It should be called NaNoWriLi, with Li for life.
