Deliberate Digressions

It’s November, and that means it’s NaNoWriMo time again. NaNoWriMo, for those who are not familiar with it, is National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write a first draft of a novel (50,000 words) in a month. For details, visit the website (http://www.nanowrimo.org/).

This will be my third year participating, and hopefully the third time will be the charm. My previous two attempts were pretty weak. The first year, I was hopelessly stuck in writer’s block, with no idea what to write about. I think I had a grand total of about 50 words.

Last year, I had a good idea for a story, but spent to bulk of the month doing background research on mythology, magic and the occult. I had a great time, but ultimately only committed about 5,000 words to the cause.

This year, I’m ready to try again… with a new and novel approach… just start typing stream of conscious and see what comes out. I’ve prepped for it by re-reading (or rather re-listening) to Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

And off we go…

11/27/2007 Update – I regret to report that my participation in NaNoWriMo this year was pre-empted by a strange case of carpal tunnel syndrome which lasted for most of this month, and daddy daycare duties during the final push week.