NaNoWriMo

No, it's not the name of some new alternative band, NaNoWriMo is the acronym for National Novel Writing Month!  It's a challenge writers to write a 50k word novel by the end of the month.  The rules are simple.  You can have notes, outlines and whatnot, but the actual text of your novel must be written during the month.

The prize is bragging rights and not much more, but it's a great way to get disciplined about writing.

Basically, if caffeine and lack of sleep were gods and they needed a ritual to worship them, this would be it.  Think of it as a marathon for writers.  Not for everyone but I thought it might be a fun way to meet some people and get a big chunk of the next installment knocked out.

As many of you know I started writing the second installment just a few weeks ago before I even heard about NaNoWriMo, (I wish I had known earlier.  I had already written 8000 words on the prologue just days before November started! Darn.) so I can't count that according to the rules, but everything I've written this month so far will be.

I'm already up to 12,000 words and you can follow my progress here.

They even have a great website with advice and forums of other writers to cheer you on. 

So ask yourself...do I really need sleep or rational thought or free time this month?  Of course you don't.  It's late to get started but it's not really about winning.  If the only people who ran marathons were those that were competitive enough to actually win, it would be a race between five guys and not the thousands who actually turn out.   It's more about the mental challenge and I just want to know if i'll collapse before the finishing line.

Wish me luck!