howdy ahynes1,

welcome! i've heard of this lit event in years past. i'm not so ambitious as you, but i'm sure there are others in the group who are.

good luck, godspeed!

kat

p.s. will check out blog.

I've done NaNo the last few years and actually hit the 50,000 mark last year. It's hard work but kind of cool to get that "winner" flag for your website. I'm not doing it this year. I'm at the editing stage of my current book so it's not good time to stop and just write.

Good luck with it.

Thanks! I've had friends do NaNoWriMo in the past and I've never really thought I had a novel in me and that 50,000 words is a lot.

Then, last year, my daughter, who was 13 at the time wrote an excellent novel. She has been bugging me for the past month or two to write a novel this time around.

When a story, and a cast of characters presented itself to me, I figured, I just have to give it a shot.

I haven't started writing yet, but today, I got a wonderful email from Tom Robbins about NaNoWriMo (along with the 90,000 other aspiring novelists).

He starts off saying, "When you sit down to begin that novel of yours, the first thing you might want to do is toss a handful of powdered napalm over both shoulders---so as to dispense with any and all of your old writing teachers"

He goes on to say, "Ah, but how can you know if it's working? The truth is, you can't always know (I nearly burned my first novel a dozen times, and it's still in print after 35 years)," and quoted Nelson Algren “Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.”

So, I don't know what I'm doing. I am writing this because I must. Will I finish it? Will it be something others will want to read, let alone be something publishable? I don't know.

However, the experience is already changing me, and I'm sure it will change me even more over the coming months. To borrow a phrase from another favorite writer of mine, "I know this much is true."

P.S. Be sure to check out my daughter's book, "Subtle Differences"

http://www.lulu.com/content/1003308

She's going to have to sell a lot of copies to be able to afford college!

I've written several novels, and have a great story to tell y'all about agents etc. but that's in our next episode...

Meanwhile - witchi tai na mo wri to noah? I just heard of this wacky thing today and...hey, nothin' like a forced march, eh? As a career copy/scriptwriter turned corporate marketing droid I've been missing those ridiculous deadlines - instead I impose them on the poor agency dudes.

But this NiMaNoNayWackathon - it's like: go ahead, make my day. Me n' my sock monkey got us a big ol' tub of brain diuretics and we're gonna let it bleed, baby!

My sock monkey says get to work...!

My daughter has attempted this several times, and last year she actually finished a novel. I have no idea if it's any good, though -- she won't let me read it.

Yo Ahynes? Howsit goin'? I only got 10,000 words so far. Gonna have to have a bad case of loose brain bowel in the next week or so. I have found that it flows much easier in the first person, especially when you can jump from one first person to the next (ie change the POV). Anyway, rock on brother and let it flow. J.