If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you know I participate in something called NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month. I first started attempting Nano in 2005, when I was a sophomore in high school. I finally “won” in 2007, November of my senior year, and I’ve finished every year since.

A bit of background: Nanowrimo happens in the month of November (aka, the worst month ever for a ballet dancer, due to a little thing we call The Nutcracker). During these thirty days, people all across the globe attempt to write a 50,000-word piece of fiction. We write novels. And we do it in a month.

Of course, these are not polished novels. We often use extensive quotations. We rarely employ niceties like sustained narrative and all that. And we always type out numbers like twenty-seven, a hundred and fifty-two, and three thousand five hundred twenty-five and thirteen twenty-sevenths. (That last sentence totaled twenty-one words, which is zero point zero one percent of a day’s work, one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven words.) It adds up.

The wittily-constructed Nano website claims 50,000 words is about 175 pages, for those who are interested. I myself wrote about 52,000 words in 98 pages. Go figure. (Double vs single spacing, perhaps?) One is proclaimed a winner after reaching 50,000 words of fiction.

The point? We write for the sheer joy of it. We write because giving ourselves permission to aim for quantity over quality often produces work that otherwise would not exist. We write because we can, dudes.

End of background.

In the old days, the logo recalled a marathoner.

Anyway, I am trying to decide if I will attempt Nanowrimo this year. The main reason I am hesitant? I am opting to write the twenty-page research paper for my Irish Literature class, and I am currently on a “let’s read about literary theory!” kick. An independent study may or may not be in the works. It’s so early that I almost don’t want to blog about it, since it seems likely to fall through or suffer some other dire fate.

We shall see.

Now it's all Vikings and coffee.

Funny lines from past Nano novels:

Example 1, from the 2007 novel (my first-ever completed) called Welsh Lessons, page sixty-nine: “If we leave the pipe in the lederhosen, the Pied Piper will be defeated.”