Nano wind up

It's October and it is time to start preparing for the National Novel Writing Month of November.

November is mayhem. Thousands of writers trying to finish fifty thousand words in a month. This isn't, quite, novel length, but it's a good start.

For me, the challenge isn't the 50k finish line, it's the novel aspect. To me, Nano means exactly that: write a novel in a month. Not 50k, not 60k or 100k, but a complete, beginning, middle and end, book. It has a plot, it has conflict, it has dialogue, it has questions to be answered, it has heroes and villans, it has it all.

For others, it is their first attempt at completing a book. It's their first attempt at writing more than a short story. For most it's a challenge they will fail at. Significantly, last year, if I remember correctly, there were about 48,000 people signed up for it, but less than 2,000 actually wrote 50,000 words or more.

The attrition rate is appalling and gives a better idea of how difficult it can be to write a book. It's about discipline, it's about ambition, it's about real life interferring, it's about not giving up, it's about the sense of achievement at the end of the month. (Especially when you're on that first page with the other high word counters.)

Of course, people cheat. There are always a handful of people who piss the rest of us off by putting down a million words or five hundred thousand or any other impossible word count. I don't count them, because they are not worth the attention.

Focus should be on those writers who have taken up the challenge and, for the first time, finished what they started. It's a monumental achievement given how many others gave up after the first week or so. And when I read some of the excerpts, I am amazed at the genius, ingenuity and cleverness of the works. A few I even want to read more.

I've had good feedback on what I've written in the past and I'm hoping for more, although this year it will be a different genre. This is my third year doing this challenge and a third different genre. Year one was a sci-fi, Prisoners of Time; last year was an urban fantasy, Demonesque; and this year is a... well, I suppose it's a suspense, tentatively entitled Deception. I'll have to research small American towns, police procedures, psychiatry and stalkers for this one and do an outline. That's going to be the challenge this year, because the previous years I had a starting point and just wrote.

I'm going to need an outline before I start this year's Nano so I don't forget clues and red herrings. I'll post excerpts here and on the nano site which is at:

www.nanowrimo.org/

There'll be a lot of people doing the Nano this year, and I can't wait to read some the new and innovative ideas people have.

For the next 24 days or so, I'm going to make reference to my progress and that of others... I'm a writer, after all, it's what I do.