I've been struck by madness!

Okay so I think I may have done the dumbest thing I’ve ever thought of in my life – I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo.

For those of you who haven’t got a clue what that is it’s the National Novel Writing Month. This wonderful (and let’s face it somewhat crazy) idea takes place in November every year and the idea is for participants to write an original fiction novel of 50,000 words or more between the first and last day of the month.

Now I’ve written a bit of stuff here and there, blogged a bit and I talk a good game but an original full length novel? Not something I’d ever really seriously considered, but then late night (and quite probably drunken) discussions with various online friends made me think it could be achievable.

After all how hard could it be? We’re not talking Booker Prize winning material here and as the site is quick to point out we’re not talking final draft material either. What you should end up with is a solid first draft which is enough to be proud of completing and the basis of something that might just conceivably be publishable someday; even if only online. You also get the accolade of being a winner on the site and get a certificate to say so.

Now of course to write a story you need to have a plot and I do have one – sort of. To be honest it’s a little vague (actually more than a little), but I do know that currently the story will be seventeen chapters which means the chapters need to be around 2,942 words each. This also means that I need to write 1,667 words a day to get the thing finished by 30th November. This seemed like an easy enough task until I sat down on Saturday with my admittedly not very well head on and tried to begin writing it.

1,667 words a day with characters you recognize for something like fanfic is simple, trying to come up with that number of words for an original story when you have no real idea of characters or plot is almost impossible.

Now I have been hampered this weekend by being ill, but I am pleased to report that I was on target with 3,362 words written by the end of Sunday evening, although working at the pub tonight has put me behind.

To be honest I have no idea why I’m doing this except that it’s a challenge and it makes a change from sitting around doing nothing productive in the evenings (oh yeah don't expect a handmade Christmas card this year as I haven't even started them).

Am I mad? Probably, but then I can't help feeling that for this competition being mad probably helps!

Interestingly, this blog entry, which is of course diverting me from valuable writing time, has used up 507 words and took me about ten minutes to write. See it's easy when you don't have a plot or characters to think about!