Janet Q. Glaser, the Wordwright
The Writer's Life of Frivolity and Philosophy

A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather’s word processor. She told him she was
    writing a story. “What’s it about?” he asked. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I can’t read.”

This joke is oh so true of me and my writing some days.  Oh, yes I can read after I have pounded out the story, but it doesn’t always make sense!  I can start a story and it will take off willy-nilly in another direction.  The beginning has nothing to do with the end or the end of a scene.  I forge madly on oblivious of the story I want to tell, only filling up the screen with words.

Hold on here.  Isn’t that okay to just write with abandon?  A whole practice of writing has grown up around this after the establishment of NaNo….a challenge for writers to put down 50,000 words in the one month of November.  They don’t care what the words are or if they make sense or are spelled correctly or if there is punctuation or if there are run-on sentences… The word count is the thing!

To my thinking, this complete freedom of writing is okay, at the time.  It is when December rolls around and I actually read all the mumbo jumbo I have written and try to cull out a story from the mess.  Now that is difficult and sometimes overwhelming.  But, with perseverance, I re-work and workagain (is that redundant?) the story.  In fact the 2007 Nano effort is now being revised for the final time and ready for my writing group to read it and give me feedback.  Oh yes, then another revision, then I may be brave enough to send it off to a few publishers and cross my fingers, turn around three times, sprinkle pixie dust, and wish on a star that someone will like this quirky mystery. 

Have I ever mentioned that I have never written a mystery??  That makes this Nano project even more challenging–trying out new genres and new voices.

Whether you write with your story outline or whether you write by the seat of your pants, a “pantser”, just do it.  It is amazing.  Write on!

A fall tradition for writers takes place every November. With ridiculous high hopes and stellar dreams, we join up for NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month whereby we attempt, and some actually accomplish, to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Ah, the foolishness of dreamers. Many of the writers hold down day jobs and still join in on NaNo. 50,000 words in 30 days equals…um. let me think…an enormous bunch of words per day.

Chris Baty, the father and cheerleader of Nano, began this crazy project in 1999 with 21 participants. In 2008 the number grew to 119,301 participants and 21,683 winners. You are considered a winner if you end up with 50,000 words by the end of the month. Incidentally noone decides if the novel is any good or if you even slung any ideas together or if it is only gibberish. As long as you meet the 50000 word goal, you are a winner.

I have participated for two years, but never reached my goal, although I did race through the novel and finish it…unfortunately I guess I am just not wordy enough…you’d never know it from this blog entry though…

I am on the fence this year as to whether to spend November revising the previous novels that I have written for NaNo or to jump in and start another absurd attempt at novel writing.

If you have always wanted to write a novel, this is your chance to make up your mind and do it!! Just do it!! Check out the site. It’s a lot of fun and you can meet writers and waste a lot of time just joining in and explorng the site.

The good thing is that if you only make it halfway to the goal, at least you have done something instead of talking about it. Try it!