10 October 2013

'Tis nearly that time of year again, when aspiring writers--and non-aspiring writers, hacks, dreamers, professionals, and word-droolers--commit to coughing up a 50,000 word literary hairball in just 30 days.

NaNoWriMo is coming, y'all! And I'm joining in this year; while work on Max's book is plodding (and I mean plodding...it's been slow work) along, there's this whisper of a story that's been poking at the back of my brain for at least a year and a half, probably longer. It's also in a genre for which I typically don't write--Young Adult--and will not be especially long, so I've decided to set Max's work aside (don't tell him,it will only get his shorts in a wad) and spend a month getting the bones of the new story out of my head.

"But Thump," you're thinking, "won't a book written in just thirty days suck pond scum?"

Yes. Yes, it will.

And that's all right.

The point to NaNoWriMo is not to have a polished novel at the end of the month; the point is to sit yo' ass down every day and scribble out a minimum of 1,667 words and have it make enough sense that the end result is the foundation of what will eventually be an awesome book.

It's a place to start. It's a creatively freeing event: you have to let the inner editor go off somewhere else to play so that you can get the story out. There's no worrying about grammar and sentence structure. There's no worrying about catching mistakes right away. There's no second guessing. You just sit down and write and let the words fall where they may, because you know that the intention is not perfection.

Just sit down and write.

This will probably be where I spend a good chunk of my time throughout November, hopefully at the table under that picture on the far wall.

My favorite table.

Yes, I sit in the corner. It feels right.

Why, yes, I did spend a lot of time in the corner in 2nd grade. Why do you ask?

Come on. Let your inner writer out for the month and join me in writing some truly horrible fiction in November. It'll be fun!