National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo, is something I’ve been meaning to take part in for some time, now, and when a friend said that she was doing it, in the middle of October (Nano starts in November), it prompted me to finally get my backside into gear and sign up.

The story I’m writing is something I never would have seen myself doing: usually I write about music and other things that either excite me or fire me up.  But this time I’m going totally off-genre and you know what? It’s FUN. Without the constraints of the ‘inner editor’ we all have, knowing no one has to see it unless I say they can, knowing November is for writing and December is for editing, all of these things are freeing, letting go of the reins and seeing where the story takes me.

It’s the story which is writing itself, with this pace and time limit. The story is already there and it just needs me to write it. Anyone who, like I did, thinks they can only write at a certain pace or who constantly compares themselves to the great writers, against whom not many of us have a hope of comparing, should sign up for NaNoWriMo. It’s a liberating experience and for his founding of it in the first place, I thank Chris Baty. I might never have known I could write this much in such a short space of time.

www.nanowrimo.org