NaNoWriMo

I'm constantly telling myself three things: I need to exercise more, write more, and eat less. Three lofty goals, to be sure, and I'm proud of them. So proud, in fact, that I repeat them almost every morning, rattling them off in my head like virtual prayer beads, only to be forgotten by the time I've gotten home for work. It's too easy put things off, to wait until tomorrow, to mark time until that magical day when we actually do something. Inertia is a powerful force, and before we realize it, the days have piled up, the years have passed, and we can only gaze in wonder at all the time lost.

Enter NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writer's Month. For those who aren't familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is an arbitrary line that hundreds of thousands of people draw in the sand each year, setting aside the month of November to achieve the patently absurd goal of writing 50,000 words in a month. I've participated three times. I've only won once.

I was going to skip NaNo this year, because, you know, I have important things to do, like watch season four of Lost. However, a close friend of mine called to tell me that he had signed up, and to inquire as to whether I was participating. Well of course I am! Wouldn't miss it for the world. You know I do it every year. I'm looking forward to it!

So anyway, I'm signed up again. And you know what? I am looking forward to it. This is the power of NaNoWriMo. There's something galvanizing about sitting down on that first day, staring at a blank page, and realizing that hundreds of thousands of people around the world are doing the same thing. Will your novel be good? Probably not. Will it be yours? Most definitely. And that in and of itself is worthy of the effort.

** Want to learn more? Head to http://www.nanowrimo.org/ and check it out.