November is Coming

Election day. Thanksgiving. And NaNoWriMo.

It is nearly that time again, National Novel Writing Month is just 23 days away, and that means that I need to get prepared for the upcoming writing frenzy. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days, from November 1 to November 30. This year will be my sixth year attempting the NaNoWriMo challenge, and alas, it pains me to admit that I have never won.

In 2007, I wrote a fantasy novel that was a prequel to a story I had written in high school. This ended at about 12,000 words and my grades slipped a bit. I got better with my time management and in 2008 reached 17,000 words without a grade slip, but still no victory. 2009 I shifted gears and tried to write a murder mystery. This reached 24,000 words. 2010 I was back to fantasy and hit 32,000 words, then last year I slipped again, back down to about 20,000 words.

NaNoWriMo is run by the same company behind Script Frenzy, which I attempted for the first time last April. This year, I have a large collection of potential plots to choose from. Specifically, I have 5 pages of notes for 23 different story ideas. Some of the ideas have close to a full page outline while others have a mere sentence to describe my thoughts, but they all have potential. The hardest part now is to narrow down my ideas and pick a single story to run with. Most of my ideas are fantasy, as that is what I enjoy the most and am most comfortable writing, but I also have a few supernatural stories, horror stories, and mysteries.

Only time will tell what I run with this year, and time is running out. After all, November is Coming.