Countdown to NaNo 2009

Some of you may recall last year I spent all of November obsessively involved with NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. Well, November is in sight and I've made the decision to commit to my second year.

I wrote stories starting exceedingly young. My stories were never very intricate, as predictable as they come, with the same kind of characters and always had a happy ending. But I always had a story of some kind deep in the works.

As I grew older, I developed the opinion that if you're going to bother reading a book, it should take you away from what you know to be real. If anything can happen in a book, why read non-fiction? Sure some people's lives are interesting, riveting, or horrific...but reading about someone's day to day life; just never appealed to me. I'd rather read about dragons, magic, warriors fighting for a cause they believe in down to their core, talking animals, spaceships crossing the galaxies and finding life far beyond our tiny little corner of space. If anything is possible in a book, why not escape reality as we know it?

I always wanted to get published. Just once...even if it wasn't a best seller, or a story that many ever read. But I never seemed to land on a story that could get me there. I always had trouble writing past a certain point. I would get right up to a climax...then realize that i didn't have one. AT all. At that point, usually the story would fizzle and disappear into a desk drawer or an obscure file on my computer.

Then came NaNo 2008. It started out as something i had heard my friends talking about. In great detail. 50,000 words in 30 days. Seemed daunting. I knew i could write the recommended number of words per day. My trouble was doing so in a story format. Because i knew, if i wrote that much...I'd have to end the story, or be close to doing so. My friend colin had been doing it for several years, and won 3 out of 4 times. I read his stories and they were great if a bit chaotic. But at the speed he was writing, I didn't blame him. So I signed up. I like challenges.

What I never expected was to win my first time round. Sure I was going to try my darnedest...but I sat back when i crossed the 50k line 3 days early and just blinked a few times because I wasn't quite sure that the number was correct.
I never expected to meet people from all walks of life also doing this challenge and to become friends with them all. From people who worked high up in local Microsoft, to the housewife with some extra time on her hands. Just out of college to high school drop outs. And their stories were as varied as their faces. For the first time, my writing wasn't being graded or judged. It didn't matter because it was all in good fun. And fun was something that was never lacking.

This year, there are going to be a few changes.

1. I started on a story idea soon after Nano ended. It didn't get very far, but has extreme potential. I'm going to continue the story, but not count the 5,500 words which have already been written in the challenge. So in the end, i hope to have a story which is closer to 60,000 words.
   
2. Last year, I sort of fell into a leadership role. I arranged for meet ups, write ins and talk outs, as well as a after-celebration. It seemed to go well and didn't affect my writing at all. I'm going to take a more serious hold of this role this year and hopefully get more local writers to join our group.
3. My main character this year is going to be different from anyone i've ever written. She's not all powerful, desired by all, strong and independent. She's more the kind of person that things just happen to and she takes everything as best as she can.
   
4. I'm also going to work on more research, to make my story more believable. This means talking to professionals, learning from them, and observing their behaviors and tactics in their day to day lives. I want my story to have merit. Not just plausible circumstances.

It's a new year, new challenge, new circumstances. I hope to be joined by old members as well as new. Let the friendly competition begin.