NaNoWriMoooooooooooo

Yeah, it’s that time of year again. National Novel-Writing Month. The time when I go in completely blind and come out with a massive word count worthy of Mordor.

By the way, that’s how you know something is epic…if it’s worthy of Mordor. Keep that in mind next time you feel like half-assing anything. You know you want to be worthy of Mordor or it’s not worth doing. Right?

Every year I see a lot of writers going through massive amounts of prep for this day. They’re drawing up outlines and character profiles, doing some autowriting exercises, and generally getting a grasp on the story they want to tackle this time around. While I do (most of the time) engage in these typical writer activities before I begin a story, with NaNo I tend to just balls-out. There’s something about the threat of a very short deadline and word count that makes me want to see what my brain can squeeze out all on its own. My end product may not be Shakespeare, but more often than not it’s something I probably wouldn’t have achieved quite so well if I’d planned ahead of time.

I’m not saying folks are silly for doing NaNo prep. Some people really need that structure to be able to effectively tell a story. If they don’t have a way to connect the dots, they run into a lot of writer’s block and choke on their own panic. I know what that’s like; I’ve experienced both with and without pre-writing prep. Sucks balls. So all kinds of power to folks who prep for NaNo. Y’all are probably the same folks who attend all the area meetups and write-ins.

I’d love to join a write-in one of these years even though I am positive that it would prove disastrous. Being that I am generally a soloist when it comes to my writing, I’m not sure how that would go down in the grand scheme of things. I think being surrounded by that many people oozing stress over word counts and verb-tense agreement would probably slow my roll immensely. I’ll just send a basket of “good luck!” cookies in my place.

So best wishes to all my fellow crazy writers. Let’s collectively break a leg! Or…wait, do writers even have their own version of wishing someone luck? I’m not so sure I want to break a leg. How about “Break a pencil!” Well. That’d work if people still wrote by hand. And I sure as hell don’t want to wish that anyone breaks their keyboard. Um. Fuck it. See you at the finish line.