Month: October 2008

It’s almost that time of year again. National Novel Writing Month is only a few weeks away. They’re celebrating their 10th year of Nano, while I’m celebrating my seventh. It’s hard to believe this is my seventh. It’s not hard to believe that I’ve never truly finished any of the “novels” I wrote during November. Maybe when the kid goes off to college. It will be very hard to hit 50,000 words this year. Having a 7-10 week old daughter in the house will no doubt cut into my novel writing time, and having a job that actually expects me to do something productive doesn’t help, either. Plus I’d kind of like to spend time with my wife now and then. I have two ideas I’m kicking around. One I’ve been thinking about for a couple years now, and one I just thought of recently. I’m leaning towards the more recent idea, because I’m afraid I won’t finish this year, and I don’t want to “waste” the more developed idea. But the newer idea still needs a second and third act, which makes things a little difficult. Just looking at the freshly updated Nano website and thinking about entering my first word count of 2008 gives me goosebumps. If you’ve never tried it, go read about what it is and how it works. In short, you will be writing a 50,000 word novel from November 1st to November 30th. Yes, this is hard. No, this is not impossible. Yes, it is incredibly rewarding (and addicting). Yes, most people you know will think you’re a little weird. But if I could only share with you the elation I felt when I first hit the word count button in my word processor back on November 27th, 2002, and it said, “50,000” for the first time, you would be totally sold. Feel free to leave me a comment or email me at jon at complaint hub dot com if you have questions about Nano, or contact me through the Nano site if you’re a participant.