NaNoWriMo

Back in my Open Diary days, a fellow blogger introduced me to the NaNoWriMo concept: National Novel Writing Month. In short, she would write every night for a month, and by the time December rolled around, she would have finished a Novel.

This year, Brendan from where brought it back into my mind.

When he told me about it, I immediately fell into excusing myself... and he only mentioned it, didn´t even try to sell me on the idea. So why did I feel like I needed to justify my lack of participation? Could it be... guilt? Ever since I heard about it, I´ve wanted to be a part of it, but felt I couldn´t. I mean, come on... write a novel in a language that isn´t my own? Exactly how much is 50 000 words? With what time? How to balance novel writing with the rest of my life? Is this just some creative scheme to procrastinate from the Boring Full Time Job Search? Then again, perhaps that´s exactly what goes on in the heads of everyone who signs up for NaNoWriMo. If it were easy, it wouldn´t be a challenge.

Last night I started jotting ideas down in a notebook, and as I wrote and wrote in my unintelligible looping handwriting I realized I haven´t the slightest idea of how a novel is written, or what is the difference between related short stories and chapters in a book. On practical aspects, I´m not really sure I want to do it by hand. I think better with my fingers on a keyboard, but the thought of trigger-happy me deleting complete paragraphs into the unwritten limbo scares me a bit. Because paragraphs usually fit, just not where I wrote them in originally.

Today I putzed around a bit online and read more about NanoWriMo, visited their site and got a bit hyped. Thoughts of I should´ve signed up, I shouldn´t be such a chicken, it doesn´t really matter if it is ALREADY november, could I write a Novel in less than 25 days... but no. Maybe not yet.

So right now I´m building on this notion of my personal Novel Writing Mo..ment. And maybe, perhaps... preparing to jump in when November 2008 comes around.