NaNoWriMo almost finished

I'd love for you to be reading about how my novel, except for some heavy editing, is finished. You won't be reading that, however. When I hurt my back and couldn't write for a few days, I lost momentum. Maybe I could have caught up, if I hadn't done anything else, but I chose to take care of other business. I'll try again next year, now that I know what is expected of me.

On a lighter note, my husband and I gave our annual "Soup and Bad Movie" party Saturday, November 21. The preparation for that took a few days. The party was a smashing success, but it was one more interruption in my novel. As I said, next year....

NaNoWriMo

Tonight, Sunday, November 15, is the halfway point of the NaNoWriMo challenge. In other words, if I'm on schedule, I will have 25,000 words written by tonight. Well, guess what? I don't! I strained a muscle in my back a week ago, making it difficult to sit, so I didn't write for three days. I am approximately 9,000 words behind.

Knowing that I may not "win" (write 50,000 words by November 30) won't deter me, however. I am on a quest (much like my teenage hero) and will keep allowing the ideas to become "black on white." Except for a great deal of editing, I want the novel to be done at the end of this month. After that, I will concentrate on holiday gifts and celebrations.

National Novel Writers' Month

If you are a writer, you may have heard about National Novel Writers' Month, or NaNoWriMo. I only recently learned of this exciting opportunity and decided to take the plunge. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. This works out to 1667 words a day. Today is November 1, and I wrote a little over that amount! Just think -- I can write a novel in a month! Note that I didn't say "a well written novel" or "write and edit." Just the same, 50,000 words is a huge accomplishment.

I'm using this opportunity to rough out the last 5 or so chapters of my already-started In An Elephant's Footprint. Since I already have a lot of the details in my head, it is pretty easy going, though it will certainly need a lot of corrections and rearranging later. Today I worked on what I consider the most exciting part, and at the end of this month I hope to know whether this chapter (chapter 10 now) should be chapter 1. You know, dump the reader into the middle of the action and all that.

Another fun part about this is that my husband, Brian, has entered too. He has developed characters and a story and thinks it will be publishable at the end. I hope so. He's helped me a lot. Now it's his turn to be creative.

Wish us luck, and it's not too late to register.