Once upon a time, some friends told me about NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month, and I just shrugged it off. It sounded like a cutesy idea full of social media people getting together on a site to hold each other’s hands through the process of writing a novel, and I just wasn’t interested in that.
I liked being the tortured artist struggling to do it all alone. Nevermind that it took me seven years to finish one novel. Nevermind that novel still isn’t revised or published. It was dragged through me with all the rage and pain a person with male anatomy can conjure up to resembling birthing pains.
But, on the other hand, I’ve always been a strong RPer with a good group of friends who I can play off of and write with. People who can run the other characters and let me focus on just one main and a couple of NPCs. Those are the people who’ve been nudging me toward NaNoWriMo for years, and I’ve finally given in.
This might be the shortest post I’ve ever done, but it’s an important one. This is me declaring my intent to write the sequel to the first novel in the next month of the NaNoWriMo competition.
I don’t know that I’ll get into the whole community thing, and I will probably never attend a local event around the concept, but I’ll be updating my word count as I go and using the effort to try and push my friends along as well. That’ll be enough for me, right there.
I’ve scheduled this post to launch at 11:59pm Halloween night, and I’m just guessing that the title will pull off the act of actually tagging NaNo in the automated tweets that accompany all of my posts. Nothing like sliding in the door at the last minute with the least effort possible!
Already a NaNoWriMo participant yourself, or interested in watching the horrors I unleash on the contest? You can find me at NaNo right HERE, and I’m sure I’ll be writing a lot of NaNo-oriented posts this month as we go along.
Clint Knapp: Writin' Shit 