Remember, Remember, the month of November

I started this blog with the intention of using it's existence as a tickler to remind me to write on a regular basis. I have discovered that the issue is not as much the writing as the publishing. I have lots of posts begun that are not completed because (another of my Achilles heels revealed) they are not as well researched as I want them to be.

I have a friendly co-worker who comes in to my office at 8:30AM on occasion and utters a sarcastic "nice update" when I've not been updating my site for a while. That's helped some, but not enough really. The biggest help have been the people who have left comments on occasion. I truly appreciate those and will be following up on some pithy ones in the near future.

It now seems like the right time to work on something a little more substantive. To that end, I will be joining up with other amateurs to take part in the the National Novel Writing Month next month. [Eliel would like to acknowledge that he heard about NaNoWriMo here --Ed.]

It will be hard, but I think I should be able to devote part of my time on the train to writing 5 days a week. Their FAQ lays out the why quite eloquently, so I'll repeat it here:

If I'm just writing 50,000 words of crap, why bother? Why not just write a real novel later, when I have more time?
There are three reasons.

1) If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Novel writing is mostly a "one day" event. As in "One day, I'd like to write a novel." Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you'll have friends to help you see it through to 50k. [Emphasis Eliel's--Ed.]


2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. With entry-level novel writing, shooting for the moon is the surest way to get nowhere. With high expectations, everything you write will sound cheesy and awkward. Once you start evaluating your story in terms of word count, you take that pressure off yourself. And you'll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and a ingenious plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you'd never imagined. There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.

3) Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.

So, tomorrow I sign up, and November 1st, I'll get to writing. Anyone else care to join me?