National Novel Writing Month

This month is National Novel Writing Month, or “NoNoWriMo,” in which aspiring writers support one another through forums to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. If you wish to try your hand at this challenge, here is the website to register:  http://www.nanowrimo.org/

I will not be taking up this challenge since it’s too much like a school assignment.  Plus, I’ve never had trouble laying down words.   I’ve been writing my whole life, so it seems.  I wrote my final paper for school twenty years ago and vowed when it was complete to begin writing for fun.  Crazy as it sounds, I did have fun writing the 10,000 word paper on pig farming and power-washing required for my MBA, (a degree undertaken while my husband completed a 3 year tour at Offutt AFB.)   I enjoyed it so much when it was over I sensed a void in my life.  When we moved to Lake Ridge for my husband’s new assignment, I decided to write the sort of book I wanted to read; a science fiction- fantasy epic.  Between juggling work, raising kids,and running a household through military separations, years passed and I had over 600,000 words.  To put this into perspective, "Memory Lake,: The Forever Friendships of Summer," Vantage Point Books, my first published novel has 435 pages and approximately 135,000 words.  So, these are a lot of words!  I set them aside for 7 years to write, edit, and publish ‘Memory Lake’.  Now, I’ve gone back to these 600,000 words to try and make them work.  They stretch before me like a very long wall covered in sloppy plaster.  Inch by inch, I am smoothing the plaster, picking away unwanted clumps, adding new, sanding the seams, and blending a seamless surface.  This will take much longer than a month.  But, that’s okay, because the satisfaction from that one inch of smooth quality is worth it.  If you do enter NaNoWriMo, keep this in mind; after your 50,000 words are written, you’ll need to smooth them out.  And you should, because that’s when the real fun begins.