NaNoWriMo

November is officially National Novel Writing Month. It involves thousands of people all across the country attempting to write an entire novel in the course of one month. It also leads to lots of agents hating the month of December when they recieve submissions for lots of frantically written and completely unpolished novels. I do have a lot of respect for the writers who view NaNoWriMo as an inspiration to finish their rough draft and then go on to spend several more months pollishing their manuscript. Still I haven’t signed myself up for NaNoWriMo and I don’t plan on finishing my next novel before November 30th.

But I have decided to allow the NaNoWriMo hype to inspire me to write. Here is a brief history of my writing life. Back in April of 2008 I got a book idea and sat down to write myself a few notes about it so that when I found the time to write I wouldn’t forget my idea. Once I started writing I got totally obsessed and couldn’t stop. Four months later I completed the first draft of CAMP LIFE. I then spent the next four months polishing and repolishing so on Dec 31st 2008, I finished my 5th draft. I then passed it off to a bunch of beta readers and finally got around to picking up their comments and finishing the 6th draft in July. I started submitting CAMP LIFE to agents in August.

In January of 2009 I started writing THE GIANT IN THE ATTIC, my memoir about how I became an illiterate author. Since I’m totally egomanical, I’m sure that this book will one day make me millions. Unfortunately, writing non-fiction isn’t all that fun. So in 10 months, I’m only half way through the first draft. Instead of completing a draft a month, lately I’ve been writing about a chapter a month. But I’ve been reading/listening to five books a week, so that counts for something right? I do plan on finishing THE GIANT IN THE ATTIC, because I think educating the world about dyslexia is important. But I don’t plan on finishing it anytime soon. Instead, I need to face the truth about myself and just write some more fiction – cause that is actually fun.

So in owner of NaNoWriMo, I started my second novel on November 1st, 2009. I have no plans or expectations of finishing it on November 30th. But I am making a few life changes during the month of November to encourage myself to write. First – I deleated all the audiobooks from my I-pod and will not listen to a single book until December. I am also going to leave my kindle at home for the entire month of November and instead take my laptop with me on the train to and from work. This absence of fiction will most likely drive me completely insane. Fortunately, I tend to lean toward the creative form of crazy. Once I’m unable to fill my imagination with the fiction of others, I’ll be forced to come up with my own. Who knows, maybe I will have a draft done before November 30th after all. I’ll keep you posted.

Joke of the Day

Once there were three men in the desert. One had bread, one had water, and one had a car door. The one with the water and the one with the car door asked the one with the bread, "Why do you have the bread?"

He said, "So if I get hungry, I can eat it."

The one with the bread and the one with the car door asked the one with the water, "Why do you have the water?"

He said, "So if I get thursty, I can drink it."

The one with the bread and the one with the water asked the one with the car door, "Why do you have the car door?"

He said, "So if I get hot, I can roll down the window."