NaNoWriMo...huh?

Yesterday, I learned about the existence of "National Novel Write Month" (nanowrimo), a non-competitive writing event for hopefuls and professionals, wherein participants begin a 50,000 word novel on November 1 and finish it by November 30.  Individuals may begin to outline and pre-write in advance, but no part of the actual prose of the novel can be written prior to November 1 (a parameter that kills my "The king had three sons" idea, as I am not compromising that opening sentence). Apparently, over 200,000 members signed up for nanowrimo last year, but only about 37,000 completed their work. Whoa.

I must admit, that having required 8 months to complete my draft of STRONGHOLD (which is approx. 80,000 words), I have no idea how I will accomplish this next feat. Part of me thinks that signing up for such an event is foolish and, actually, detrimental to the writing/editing rhythms I've developed; however, another part of me thinks that nothing could be more invigorating or useful for me than such a divergent, wholly new challenge like this one. If I decide to run with this, the blog is gonna look a little different come November, but we can cross that bridge when the time comes.

So what does this mean for STRONGHOLD...well, that's the scary part. I think it means I need to complete my fourth draft and send it to readers by November 1st, so that I have a good reason to be working on novel number 2 rather than editing novel number 1 during that month. That is a feat in and of itself, and I suppose if I want to hit that deadline, I had better get back to editing now.

Thanks for reading!
C.J.