Nanoing

I love November. For the past several years I've participated in the writers' marathon known as Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month). For those of you who've somehow missed this spectacular event, tens of thousands of people sign up every year determined to write 50,000 words in 30 days. The idea is to get people out of their perfectionism, into a writing routine and push them to get out a rough draft.

I'm pretty good at getting words on paper. At this point I have ten published books to my name and a couple more in the pipeline. Some are longer and some are shorter than 50,000 words. The rough drafts took me anywhere from one to three months to complete (the editing...now that takes time). All of which is to say that I know how to finish a story. I even know how to get 50K down during the month of November because I've done it seven times already. I also know how to fail the Nano, because I've done that too.

So what do I have to prove by doing the Nano again this year? Nothing. But I'm going to do it anyway, because there's nothing like the rush of getting all those words out in one big splat. If I do it right, I'll have plenty of raw material to bang away at over the next few months until the mass of goo produced in November turns into something readable.

I'm going to start with a novella for a new contemporary romance series I'm developing and run right from that to a second murder mystery in my Tanzania series (the first one is one of those "in the pipeline" stories). Hope I don't get whiplash with the change.

If you're doing the nano too, I'd love to buddy up. You can find me there as DevB. 

Oh, and my newsletter comes out next week with a nano oriented short. If you're interested in that, the sign up sheet is on the right. 

See you in a few days.

Race ya. On your mark, get set, go!