Write your story

National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) starts on November 1. It's a 30-day challenge: Write a novel (50,000 words) during the month of November. Lots of published books have started out as NaNoWriMo novels (Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen; Cinder by Marissa Meyer), but the project's main goal is to get people to write for the sake of writing. For the sake of telling stories, no matter if they're ever read by another living soul or not.

Interestingly, Daniel and I are apparently switching identities for the preparation stage of this project. He, normally the procrastinator, has been developing his novel idea for months: piecing together the details of its futuristic setting, talking through complicated plot twists, and even spending a couple of days in the library researching various medieval societies. I, on the other hand, have no idea what's going to spill out of my brain next Sunday. I haven't even decided if I'm strictly writing a novel or if I'm going to do essays or maybe short stories instead. I plan on starting with a blank document and making words spill out until something interesting happens. (This is what I had to do for most of my assignments in the Creative Writing class I took at EMU, and it worked surprisingly well.)

I think I'm too much of a reader -- and literary critic -- for this type of project. I think the reason I've had trouble coming up with a story idea is because I want my story to be remarkable. Stories are one of my favorite things about life. I can't stand the thought of creating one that's dumb or boring or cliche. Somehow, I'll have to suspend all my standards for high-caliber writing and focus on quantity of words, not quality. I'm an editor by nature, so my instinct will be to edit as I go, but that's not the point of this endeavor.

I've been waffling on whether or not to go through with the project ever since Daniel announced his plan to participate, but last week, I officially decided to do it. After that I was vaguely worried about it (mostly about my uncharacteristic complete lack of planning ahead and preparing), and casting around for story ideas. Then I watched this awesome talk (from the first-ever NerdCon: Stories that took place earlier this month) by Sarah Mackey, director of Community Engagement at NaNoWriMo, and I got really excited.

She talks about why every single one of our stories matters, how writing a novel in a month can spur us on to other new and fabulous experiences, and the value of spontaneous creativity. (PLUS SHE QUOTES MALCOLM REYNOLDS so obviously she knows what she's talking about.)

I'm not prepared - but I'm ready. 

Anyone else gearing up for NaNoWriMo? :)