Gearing up for 30 Days of Torture known as National Novel Writing Month

Every year thousands of masochists (i.e. writers) around the world say goodbye to their lives as they know them and go on a 30-day mad dash to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I have undergone this exquisite torture for the past 5 years and this will make year number 6. I still have yet to reach the requisite 50,000 words, but this year I feel hopeful. There is no particular reason for this hope. I have not prepared my outline or written my list of scenes or made a plan of how I will get 1,667 words a day written for 30 days in the month of November. I have simply learned to love the anticipation of November 1st and the joy beating my creativity with a baseball bat until it bleeds words and scenes in some coherent order. I also look forward to all the interesting people I will meet at the write-ins around town. Instead of being such a solitary slug slouched over my laptop, I want to be a more sociable participant this year.

I plan to chronicle my 30 days of torture here as a cathartic release from the writers block that is sure to come and hopefully as a hedge against giving up in week three which has been my habit these last 5 years.

This year I will be writing a novel about a murder that takes place in a Buckhead Chinese restaurant entitled, "Shrimp Fried Lies." I have no idea what is going to happen yet, I only know that someone has to die in a bowl of won ton soup. I have read that this can happen.

The rules are as follows. Participants cannot officially start writing until midnight November 1st, although you can do as much outlining, planning and prewriting as you want. Then you write fast and furiously for the next 30 days, forgetting to shower, forgetting to eat anything other than rice cakes and coffee and frequently forgetting such trivialities as family, friends, jobs, laundry, etc.

What do you get for winning? For crossing the threshold of 50,000 words (which amounts to about a 150-page novella) you get, uh, bragging rights, an editable first draft of a novel that can someday be published, and knowing what napalm smells like in the morning...the smell of victory!

Will I make it? Will I grind out the 50,000 words in between working a full time job, studying as a full time student and being a full time pet parent to two rascally dogs? Check in and see.

If you are interested in taking the 50,000-word challenge, you can check it out at http://www.nanowrimo.org/.