Yes. Yes, I did. I signed up for NaNoWriMo.
No, I don’t think I am going to get a book out of it.
No, I don’t think it makes me a writer.
Yes, it seems a bit hokey.
Yes, I feel a little silly.
Yes, I’m sure the very idea of a project like this has Flannery O’Connor spinning in her grave.
Probably, I have lost my mind, as I couldn’t manage to keep up the blog but somehow believe I can commit to writing 50,000 words (a little less than 1700 words a day) in one month and blog and do my full-time job.
But it occurred to me: I spend a lot of time thinking about writing and very little time actually writing (well, fiction anyway). And I saw this quote “One of Nanowrimo’s many benefits is that it prepares you for a steady, productive writing life, and reinforces the fact that doing some writing every day will eventually produce a novel” on this blog (after following a link from another blog), and it really resonated with me. I have a steady writing life in terms of work–I spend day after day writing case studies for a Major Software company, after all–but I have never successfully transferred that work ethic over to writing fiction. And any writer who isn’t feeding you a line of crap about inspiration and genius will tell you, it’s 90 percent about the work, at least in producing a draft.
So, feeling very “now or never,” I signed up.
Now I just have to decide what to write about. I have a week. That’s plenty of time, right? I have a few ideas, actually, but I’m just not sure about them. I’ve been carrying them around a long time, and in that time, my tastes as a reader have changed somewhat. I’ve got a bit of thinking to do…
The Evening Reader 
I think this sounds very exciting – wishing you lots of luck! Looking forward to hearing about your writing.
Thanks Karen! I will give updates as I (hopefully) progress. 🙂
I think my favorite bit of inspiration for joining NaNoWriMo is something I saw on the “About NaNoWriMo” page. It says something like: You can turn a very bad first draft into a good book, but you can’t turn a blank page into anything except a blank page. I think even Flannery O’Connor could get behind logic like that.
Good luck with your novel. My username is Aliteratus. Shoot me a NanoMail if you want to be writing buddies. 🙂
Hi Alison! Thanks for visiting. I think you are right–even Flannery O’Connor would agree that if one is going to write, then one should write–not talk about it, and certainly not whine about it. Good luck to you as well!