Web Log Entry #0089, Monday, November 3, 2003: Day 350

Anchorage Sunrise: 8:31am Sunset: 4:53pm High Temp: 43° Low Temp: 32° Hey, November is National Novel Writing Month! You know what that means! Well, maybe you don't. I didn't know that November and Novel Writing went together until I saw a notice about the nanowrimo.org website in a newsletter that I get. It seems that by an amazing coincidence, the National Novel Writing Month Center sponsors a contest each November (well, they have for the last five years), wherein real and aspiring novelists devote the month to writing a novel. The rules are fairly simple: Each contestant writes an original novel of 50,000 or more words, starting no earlier than November 1st (generating notes and ideas prior to the 1st is acceptable), and completing it on or before November 30th. If you finish, you win. It's pretty much on the honor system, as they expect thousands of people to enter, hundreds to finish, and they don't really have much of a staff to verify anything. One could copy a bunch of text off the Internet and as long as it was over 50,000 words, their automatic word counter would give it the thumbs up. This is OK, since they don't really give out prizes. Those people who would cheat merely to win this probably have no self-control with solitaire, either. So I decided to write a novel this month. I figured I don't have much else going on, and it would be good practice. I decided to use a novel I started many years ago as a base, but add some different characters, change the story arc, and of course, start from scratch on the actual text. I'll post some excerpts and a status report on the Novel Status page on this site, so you can check it out if you're curious. I'll be honest here. This may not be easy. 50,000 words in 30 days is about 1,667 words a day, and I've been lucky if I've pulled together that many words in a week between the two websites/newsletters I'm supporting. So I'm saying this now, I think this journal just isn't going to happen much this month. I'm sorry, but I respect you too much to lie. It's not you, it's me. Really.

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© 2003 Evan M. Nichols