under the fire star

I decided to take the plunge and participate in this year's NaNoWriMo. Let's see... I'm prepping for it by reading (don't laugh!) 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them.

Want to write a novel? Really quickly?

If, over the next few weeks, you see someone sitting in a coffee shop staring at nothing and muttering about how to get rid of a body or what would happen if cats could time-travel by sneezing, do not be alarmed. It's novel-writing time again.

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It began in 1999 when freelance writer Chris Baty became frustrated at his inability to finish or even begin writing a novel. To force himself to sit down and write something, anything, he enlisted 20 friends for an impossible dare: hammer out a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.

It didn't have to be well plotted, edited, or even very good. It just had to get written, and by that lofty criterion six participants (including Baty) managed it via massive quantities of caffeine, encouragement, and dogged perseverance.

Word spread. Media coverage, word of mouth, and that enclave of frustrated writers, the Internet, helped the number of dedicated literary masochists rise dramatically. This year 25,000 people are expected to sign up and thereby abandon social life, regular hygiene and workplace productivity to achieve the lifelong dream of becoming a really bad novelist....

...There's still time to sign up. There's no fee, no obligation, no penalties for failure. Only the thrill of creativity, the heady joy that comes from realizing you're actually writing a novel, the cathartic blowout party afterwards, and bragging rights forever....