Nano the Heck out of the Wrimo

For those of you who follow me on facebook or twitter, you must have noticed that over the course of the past week or so, I've been using the word "Nanowrimo" a lot.  You might be surprised to learn that it is not the name of an awesome Native American ceremony, nor is it a particle smaller than a neutrino, currently being spun at the speed of light in the Large Hadron Collider.  It is instead, a convoluted acronym for a very panic-inducing exercise.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November.  Founded in 1999, Nanowrimo has grown from it's humble roots to unofficially taking over the month of November, as hundreds of thousands of writers – both professional and aspiring – try to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.

That's right, an entire novel.

Now, you might say, but Kate, you write novels for a living!  Surely the idea of a deadline does not frighten you!  To which I would reply, yes, I am a professional writer and deadlines TERRIFY me.  It is that terror that wakes me up in the middle of the night, and keeps me typing during the day.  But yes, I suppose that I should be accustomed to the terror, and not need some arbitrary month declared the time frame in which to write a novel to motivate me.  After all, I do it all the time.

But, what I don't do conceive a story, block it out, write and revise it, in the space of a month.  Which is what I'm planning to do.*

Now, I have attempted to participate in Nanowrimo before, to little success.  A lot of people get very excited at the beginning of the month, but then flag in the middle, and by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, you're in a pie-induced stupor and have forgotten about it completely.  But this time, I have a secret weapon:  You.

I'm going to make myself accountable to you.  Posting word count updates, writing problems, and their eventual solutions.  And you can do the same to me!  Find me on facebook or twitter – or just email me here.  Or, become my writing buddy on Nanowrimo.org (my user name is KateNoble).  Together, you and I can get through this, and come December 1st, our stupor will be project induced, not pie!

So as you can see, there's lots of writing to be done.  But in the meantime, check out my brand new contest!  The winner will receive a huge box of books from me, just in time for Christmas!  Besides the authors listed on the contest, there are books from Katharine Ashe, Shana Galen, Vanessa Kelly, and Mia Marlowe, too!

Until next week, happy Nanowrimoing!

*Yes, this is slightly different than the standard rules of 'wrimo-ing.  But I make my own rules!