Word Up

It's November, which can mean any number of things. The year's almost over, it's dark by 4:30 p.m. now, Thanksgiving's in a few weeks. But it also means it's time for NaNoWriMo, aka National Novel Writing Month.

The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month. This is the third year I've attempted it; two years ago, I made it to about 35,000 words while last year I hit about 3,000 before a dead laptop, the Philly Marathon and Thanksgiving got in the way. I'm busier than ever this year, what with weekly podcast episodes, a biweekly running column and life in general going on, but I'm determine to at least try.

The idea isn't to write the so-called Great American Novel, it's to simply write something. It's an exercise that leads you to make some interesting and not always wise choices, as I found with the story I wrote two years ago. It started out promising and got really, really weird as I tried to keep it going. By the end, it was just a mess, and an unfinished one at that. I still want to go back and rework it because I had the beginnings of something good there.

As for this year, I want to start from scratch and of course, I haven't started yet. It's highly unlikely I'll hit the 50K mark this year, but I'll give it a shot.

Because it's all about the words: