NaNoWriMo Rhino

Welcome to November! A time of hot cider, pumpkin pies, red maple leaves, and crisp weather. Cloudy days with the temptation of words falling like raindrops and pre-Thanksgiving Christmas celebrators secretly blasting Christmas music. It's glorious. Normal people call it November. The writing world calls it NaNoWriMo.

Sound it out: Na-No-Wri-Mo

Sounds kind of dorky, doesn't it? Makes me think of Rhino's and noses. Still, this year I shall embrace the dork (only because it's the first year I've actually known what NaNoWriMo stood for). NaNoWriMo is the shortened version of National Novel Writing Month. I previously knew it as a weird name for a time when all authors-to-be freak out and try to write 50,000 words in a month.

People would ask me, "Are you doing NaNoWriMo?"

"No," I'd blurt, only because I didn't want to associate with a silly name and I hate forcing words out when my mental word-sponge is empty. *shudder* There's no less pleasant feeling. 

Once I knew the true name for NaNoWriMo, my writer-starved brain instantly conjured a set schedule and a glorious excuse to write for 30 days straight. 

"You don't have to reach 50,000 words," it said to me with a crazed look. "Just engage in National Novel Writing Month and try and write more. That's all."

"But it sounds silly," I argued.

"YOU NEED TO WRITE! Your high horse is collapsing anyway."

It's true. I've been dying to write. I fall asleep thinking about writing, I count down the days until I have that extra hour on Thursday to sit before my novel. *sigh* NaNoWriMo is an excellent excuse to work myself even more to the bone (and like it!). So I chose to humor my twitching, anxious, writer-desperate brain. I handed it a cookie jar of words and started scratching out a schedule and a strategy for the month of November. 

The plan: Write every day (even if it's for 5 minutes for 5 words).

The goal: REACH 50,000 words with my current novel, A Time to Die. (I wasn't going to have a goal, but it's no fun entering a challenge without one, right?)

Starting word count: 39,182 (10,818 words to go). To put you in perspective, I've written 10,000 words over the past 5 months. *shame*

According to the NaNoWriMo novel statistics word count tracker, I need to average 361 words in a day. That's one page a day. A single page. That's like a sneeze. Today I sit down at my computer with some Cheez-its and tea and enter my "Stories and Stuff" folder without a tinge of homework-guilt. God may have called me to Speech Therapy, but He's also called me to write. I will follow through (but I'm still going to call this month November).