Yeah, I’m one those utter loonies who has signed up to write a novel in 30 days in November. It’s called National Novel Writing Month and you agree to write 50,000 words in 30 days. 50,000 words is not a novel (seems to be more a novella, I think), but it’s a start.

Now, the completely insanity of this is I haven’t written any words of fiction at all in approximately 18 months. And I promised myself, after having written most of an entire draft of a novel that meandered and didn’t really have an ending that the next time I was going to have a rock-solid outline, by God. I was going to work out the story ahead of time, I was going to make sure that it worked, dammit, before I put one word on paper. You can take detours more easily when you already have the roadmap.

I do not have a finished outline. Hurrah.

I do have, however, 7200 words I didn’t have on October 31. And while I feel exceptionally out of shape writing-wise, it’s actually kind of fun to create again. I keep complaining to my friend Michele (the gadfly who insisted we start checking in with one another in order to keep ourselves on the straight and narrow, writing-wise) that what I’m writing for NaNoWriMo is utter shite.

But, you know: the best novel ever written is the one that’s still in someone’s mind. Putting it down on paper is the real trick.