Midterm? Done.
Birthday Party? Sunday.
Write a Novel? Month of November.
Am I crazy?
Are you asking me? The crazy woman?
Four more days until the official start of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.
Here is the scoop:
“National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap……”
You better believe I will be writing a lot of crap
Here’s my update. I have no plot, but a general sense of who the players are. The main character is an archivist/mom (Wow! What a stretch.) and most of the excitement will take place in her head and in history as she looks over old letters asking questions about her father. Which leads to other questions….and discoveries.
In the end, I hope it will not be so much a novel about her and her father, as a novel about the divisions in this country (past and present) and the heartbreak and joys of being a visionary here, on either side of the spectrum. I also have a feeling that in the end it will steer away from being a book about a man, her father, to being a book about being a strong women in this country. We shall see.
I don’t write fiction. I’m going to try. And a lot of it is going to be crap. I don’t think I’ll be sharing much of it here, but perhaps little peeks. I don’t know. I’m going to take it as it comes.
I’ll probably put myself on a real blog schedule in November, posting twice a week on say, Tuesdays and Fridays, or something like that. Yes, yes, I can’t stick to schedules, but I’m going to try. Mr. G, my 4th grade science teacher, told us never to use the word can’t. (There’s a future post. Amazing teachers in my life.)
Here’s my list of blogging buddies doing this too. Question mark means I’m unsure of your status. If you’re not on here, let me know and I’ll add you.
Interstellar Lass
Angie
Mamacita
Catherine/Fountain Pen
J Star
Indigo
Tamara
Vicki
Judy
Stephanie
Poopie
Zee
Elle
++++++++++++++
And for those who know my cake-making history, I am going to attempt to make an Elmo cake.
Really.
If you know me, you know that’s braver than trying to write a novel.
I will post my letter to Hannah on Sunday or Monday.
Or earlier.
I don’t have to stay on schedule until November.
