Nano-Nano

Nano-Nano

It’s that time of year again.  Today thousands of writers are sharpening their pencils and cleaning their desktop as the annual fiction writing marathon known as Nanowrimo (Nano for short) crosses the starting line.  Can you write 50,000 words of a novel in a month, the month of November to be exact?  That’s the challenge posed by Chris Baty and his crew, and there are writers all over the world who think they can.  From all corners of the earth, there’s a common bond of fiction bringing writers together as they work on their individual projects.

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It doesn’t sound as difficult as it is really.  50,000 words isn’t quite 1500 words a day which isn’t much for a seasoned writer, but where it falls apart is when the plot you’ve decided on doesn’t quite work out the way you thought it would – or your child comes down with flu – or your boss gives you an additional work project needing urgent attention – or ––and the list goes on!  Many of the thousands who begin the challenge won’t complete it, but they leave with a feeling of achievement for what they did accomplish and a vow that next year they’ll try again and they will succeed.

This will be my fourth attempt at the Nano challenge, and this time I’m armed with a better plot, a lot more motivation to complete it, and I’ve even got my official Nanowrimo t-shirt to prove I’m taking part.  I’ve got a schedule to keep my word count on track, and a cast list to tell me who my characters are and what they look like.  Now all I need to do is keep the children healthy, and my work stuff under control, and I’ll be fine – right up to the point where the plot becomes unstuck because of something I hadn’t taken into consideration.  When you think about it, it’s a bit like life really!