NaNoWriMo 2010

Link to the National Novel Writing Month "NaNoWriMo" Site
So that's November pretty much planned then!

American writer Catherine Drinker Bowen wrote:

"Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind."
(c) Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, Dec 1957.
  
National Novel Writing Month, that now runs each November as a challenge and inspiration to produce that elusive book you have in you but never have time to complete, gives an opportunity to dust the mirror off and plunge into your story.

I want to redream dreams so others can taste them. I want to show the world as an amazing, precious place and help people see through shallow waters to the rich radiance of possibilities beneath the surface.

I always have several ideas for books simmering on the back burner in the file labelled "Procrastination Station"! Most people do, even those who don't write! At the moment I have a few stories inspired by episodes and characters in my own family history explorations over the years just waiting for the space to find a voice.

NaNoWriMo strips away excuses. People worldwide are doing what you are, many for the first time.

NaNoWriMo shreds self-editing and self-censorship (until December, at least!). You write every day of November until your 175 page novel with its 50,000 words is complete.

Exhilarating! Terrifying!

Now I just have to get well enough to sit up at the laptop for long enough most days next month to complete word count goals.

I just need enough freedom from the brainfog of my mangled immune system to put down all those strands of dialogue, action, plot and emotional tension without burning myself up and out.

Short stories and poems can be tackled in bite sized pieces. These past years of illness have been made more bearable because this is the case on my better days.


A novel is just bite sized pearls woven onto a thread of gold and dusted with an overarching rainbow of paced purpose and closure.

At the very least, the challenge of NaNoWriMo is kissing a big smacker of permission my way. I intend to try and pucker up.