NaNoWriMo!

Well, Friday is November 1, and that means National Novel Writing Month! I've participated every year since 2003, and managed to complete it every year except for 2007.

I had high hopes of plotting out my story this year in great depth and doing something I was really proud of, but... well, you've all seen how just a twice-a-week blog writing has been. Clearly I'm not in a place this year to do much of a novel. However, I didn't want to just give up.

So I'm speed writing it.

For those who aren't familiar with my speed stories, it's basically meant to just be a writing exercise or prompt to get you writing in the first place. The idea is that you type and type and type without stopping. The problem is, I type so fast that my hands get far ahead of my brain very quickly and the things I write come out pretty ridiculous. I have entire stories I've written through speed writing chunks, and they are absolutely nonsensical but had a minor following on the NaNoWriMo boards several years back. (After I finish Skye, I'm thinking I might post some of those. They're super fun.)

This will let me keep up the tradition of participating in NaNo, possibly inspire some ideas for a real piece of writing later, all while keeping away the burden of, ya know, making coherent sense.

So prepare for a November of awesome writing like this, taken from my first and favorite speed story:

She picked up a magazine that was lying on the floor and thumbed through it, reading a few of the fashion tips - like those would ever help her! she thought dourly - and reading a bit of the gossip columns of the celebrities. She really couldn't care less who so and so was dating and who they were interested in. She wished she were famous so people wouldn't write that stuff about her because she wouldn't let them.  

She tossed the magazine back onto the floor, without a glance at it. What should she do in the long hours? And the evening longer hours tomorrow, when she hadn't school again? She would have school on Monday, and that would fill up a long time of the day, but now what? She couldn't sleep, she couldn't watch TV, she couldn't read, she couldn't eat, and those were all her choices. 

Maybe the computer could work. She went to it, plugged it in, and turned it on, and it flashed an ERROR screen, like it almost always did. With a shriek of disgust, she threw it on the ground and walked home.

Happy NaNoing, friends!