NaNo Prep time

And the count down begins! 12 days before the caffeine induced insanity known as National Novel Writing Month begins. Who's in? For those of you who haven't come up with an idea yet, you still have time. Last year, a week before NaNo started, I had decided to not do it, for the third year in a row. But while I was in the shower, an idea hit me and BAM in a week I was back in the game, writing Glow Stick (and doing character development as I went along).

The next several Monday's will be NaNo related (so from now until December). This week, we're going to ease into the NaNo talk and start with a brief overview of what NaNo is for those of you who have never heard of it before.

Here is the direct history from the NaNo God himself - Chris Baty.

Year One: Making Some (Not Entirely Horrible) Noise

The very first NaNoWriMo took place in July 1999, in the San Francisco Bay Area. That first year there were 21 of us, and our July noveling binge had little to do with any ambitions we might have harbored on the literary front. Nor did it reflect any hopes we had about tapping more fully into our creative selves. No, we wanted to write novels for the same dumb reasons twenty-somethings start bands. Because we wanted to make noise. Because we didn’t have anything better to do. And because we thought that, as novelists, we would have an easier time getting dates than we did as non-novelists.

So sad. But so, so true.

The first year’s trials and tribulations are laid out in the introduction to No Plot? No Problem!But the short version is that our novels, despite our questionable motives and pitiful experience, came out okay. Not great. But not horrible, either. And, more surprising than that, the writing process had been really, really fun.

Fun was something we hadn’t expected. Pain? Sure. Embarrassment? Yes. Crippling self-doubt followed by a quiet distancing of ourselves from the entire project? You bet.

But fun? Fun was a revelation. Novel writing, we had discovered, was just like watching TV. You get a bunch of friends together, load up on caffeine and junk food, and stare at a glowing screen for a couple hours. And a story spins itself out in front of you.

I think the scene—full of smack-talk and muffin crumbs on our keyboards—would have rightly horrified professional writers. We had taken the cloistered, agonized novel-writing process and transformed it into something that was half literary marathon and half block party.

We called it noveling. And after the noveling ended on August 1, my sense of what was possible for myself, and those around me, was forever changed. If my friends and I could write passable novels in a month, I knew, anyone could do it.

Which is how the whole thing really got rolling.

– Chris Baty

The rest of the REALLY interesting history

NaNoWriMo is a way to shake the plot bunnies loose (or cause them to run screaming under the bed) and have a lot of caffeine and chocolate. Sleep is for December. You don't "win" anything, unless you set up prizes for yourself (which I do) but it's an excuse to get out and write at a coffee shop and who couldn't use some time at Panera Bread?

If you're interested in signing up, or you're signed up already - feel free to make me a writing buddy. MidWestPrincess - NaNoWriMo official site