3 outside the skinny blog

Here it is October again. That, as you may know, is the month before November.

Some of you may remember that I have spent other Novembers unsuccessfully participating (if you can call it that) in that annual global exercise in literary insanity called National Novel Writing Month. (aka NaNoWriMo) You might even remember the exact number of failures I enjoyed. No? Okay, four of them. I started four novels and never finished them. A couple of them got to 20,000 words, the others, I don't even remember but not that many by a far stretch. After the fourth failure I swore off the event. What was the point? I asked myself, and had no answer, so I quit. No more.

Obviously, I've succumbed again else I wouldn't be writing this, would I. * Sigh * What IS the compulsion? I do not understand. They got me this time with their Camp NaNoWriMo theme. This, it turns out (I think), is not this November's theme. It appears (I haven't bothered to do any serious research into the question) they had some kind of practice session/s in July and/or August? And called it Camp NaNoWriMo. But when I found the event's themed products, something snapped in my brain and I went nuts. Volumes of memories of my childhood summer camp came gushing forth. Things I hadn't thought about for fifty years came rocketing out of my deep memory banks and showered me with nostalgia. Hooked? Ha! Before I knew it, I'd bought the tee shirt AND the “care package” and was eyeball-deep in my journal writing down those memories.

So, ahem. This is a 100% self-inflicted misery. I tell my closest friends, poor creatures, and I announce it here, but there's nothing stopping me from changing my mind at any moment. Let's be clear: at this time I have zero ideas for a novel, and only a few very vague notions about characters. I'm hoping I can beef that up a bit before Nov. 1, you betcha.

I dug out the materials I purchased in years past; the book No Plot? No Problem! And the No Plot? No Problem! Novel-Writing Kit (I'm a sucker for kits, you may have noticed. I also rediscovered the little package of achievement badge patches I bought one of those years, with delight.)

I think for me, it's trying to find the fun in writing again. A lot of life stuff got in my way a few years back, and I just haven't felt the urge to write fiction. But I did enjoy it so, and I sold quite a few short stories to small-press and online markets, so someone else liked my writing a bit, too...at one time, when I was busy writing story after story, it seemed like the ideas would never run dry. No way could I ever write them all. Funny how life stuff can make that all go away in the blink of an eye.

OK, so here's the announcement, ta da. I'm going for the brass ring: a 50,000 word novel in 30 days; between November 1 and November 30, 2011. When they make them available, I'll install a word-count meter here. I'll also try to post little reports, musing, whatever, here, daily but I'm not promising that.

Part of me is going, “Oh crap, here we go again,” and another part is going, “Oh goody goody goody! We're doing NaNo again!”