Writing a 50K

This post is about NaNoWriMo, or the National Novel Writing Month. You've probably heard of it. I love Nanowrimo. It's fun and exciting to commit yourself to writing the first draft of a book in just one month. Nanowrimo is in fact one of the reasons that November is my favorite month of the year (others: my birthday, first snowfall). And this month my friend Tabor is writing his own novel for November, so I have someone to compete against. The best part of any competition, though, is winning it. :)

Another reason I like Nano is because I think it shows that people are creative. Inherently creative. Maybe people suck at the craft of it, about writing down their ideas and transforming them into cohesive plots, but they have ideas. And that's fun. I don't think you'll find many uncreative children, but somewhere people learn to suppress their creative spark. To hell with that.

There is one thing I don't quite get about NaNoWriMo. The community. I go to the NaNoWriMo website to put in my word count, of course, and I like getting free goodies at the end of the month...but I don't get the community that surrounds it. Especially since they're always asking for donations. What exactly are your costs here, other than running a high traffic website (a problem that would seem to have an obvious solution)?

Now I'm sure that the people are great, nice people. People who like books and stories. People who aren't afraid to say "Fuck it, I'm writing a book," and then proceed to do just that. But between the forum posts, community meet ups, and write-a-thons, I'm not all that surprised that most people fail to finish their book. I think people are more interested in talking about their book and writing than actually sitting down and slamming your face against the keyboard until something comes out.

Sadly, I'm a little behind right now, for various reasons. The book I've chosen to write is called City of the Damned, a kind-of sequel to my fantasy novel No More Kings. Well, it has some of the same characters, anyway, although both the main characters are new. Competing against me is Tabor's The King's Fool, which I would describe as a Game of Thrones-esque power struggle from the perspective of the cunning court jester.

Time to get back to work.