Thursday, October 07, 2010

It's Coming...

I can see it in the distance, just cresting over the horizon. It's NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month.

I've been involved in this madness now for the past four years (or so). I haven't won every year, but I've managed a respectable 50%.

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo (Nano for short) is an annual event where anyone can commit to creating 50,000 words of fiction during the month of November. Local people get together at coffeeshops and write together while ingesting inordinate amounts of legal addictive stimulants. Nice. And, like any good contest, there are prizes. The Office of Letters and Light, the creators of this worldwide zaniness, provide some goodies. Local groups provide others.

One year our group was given small cans of Play-Doh because it was easier to smash and throw when you were pissed and/or frustrated. It worked really well. The damage was kept to a minimum.

It might work well this year, too. I'm going in cold for the first time. I'm a very structured person, a real Type-A, and I've never gone in without a really structured outline. The only thing I know is that I have a new werewolf family, Italian/Etruscan in nature, stemming from Romulus and Remus of ancient legend.

We'll see where that goes. Time to go do some research.