Welcome all my friends...

Are you ready?

We’re mere hours away from beginning the 2009 National Novel Writing Month challenge. 30 days of chaos, madness and freeform, no-thinking-just-writing excitement.

Are you ready?

Of course you’re ready. You’ve been getting ready for at least a month if not longer. Maybe you’ve been getting ready since December 1, 2008, telling yourself “next year I’ll make it.” Maybe you signed up yesterday, persuaded by a friend, wondering what you’re doing trying to cram 50,000 words in 30 days. Either way, you are ready.

So you don’t have any idea of what you’re writing. So your characters have no interest in running the story you’ve set before them. So you’ve got class or a job or a family and you’re concerned that you’ll never sit down to write.

Don’t worry. Don’t panic. Don’t think. Just write.

You’ve signed on to NaNoWriMo because you want to write a novel and you believe you can write 50,000 words in a month. If you break it down into nice, orderly numbers, you’re looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,666.67 words a day. You can do that. It’s easy. You’re not trying to write a Pulitzer prize winning novel or win grammar contests with your manuscript. That’s for the rewrites and revisions which you are NOT to do in November. That’s why November is Nation Novel WRITING Month. February is National Novel EDITING Month (NaNoEdMo for those keeping score).

Let that knowledge free you up from editing your work. Send your inner critic and editor on an all expense paid trip to Aruba (or where they really deserve to go: Siberia!), informing them that next year ‘round February 1st they can drop by for tea.

But for now, it’s all you, your imagination, and a blank page or blank Word doc. The whiteness is your friend, the emptiness is your playground where you let your imagination run free and wild. The whiteness is not a void of endless nothingness, ready to swallow your soul you and make you stare your fears dead on and … well, you get it. The blank page is your friend who says, come on, let’s play. This is gonna be fun!

There are people here who’ve made it, there are people here who are trying again, and there are people here for the first time. The truth is that life may intrude this month. If nothing else happens, there’s Thanksgiving at the end of the month. You do have that entire weekend to write (unless you’re in retail and then you have my sympathies (been there, done that, never again!)). If life gets in the way, so be it; it’s unavoidable.

What is avoidable is the television. Nothing is going to happen on TV in November that you can’t get the DVD in the Spring or watch online in December. Nothing is going to happen on TV that you can’t find out about the next day at work or school. So don’t turn the TV on; it will cost you word time and you will be unhappy later on.

And try to stay off the forums. They are a huge time suck. Check in here to see if any write-ins are scheduled or just go to the calendar. If you’ve got any problems and need answers, drop by, post your question and then get back to the novel.

And don’t forget the write-ins. For those who aren’t familiar with them, they’re a chance to get together with fellow writers away from home and all those distractions and write. We usually have it at diners, cafes, or the like. They can be set up on weeknights or weekends.

As for the writing part, don’t worry if the story doesn’t kick you into overdrive by November 2nd. You’ve got a month, 30 days, to work it out. The point here is 50,000 words. This frees you up from having to think up an awesome, cool, never-thought-of-before ending. You can do that in December. 50,000 words. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. Relax. The more tense you get, the more you squeeze shut the imagination, and that’s counter to what NaNoWriMo’s all about.

Finally, I’m here for you all. I’ve done this before. I know what can happen. I’ll get out a weekly post, cheering you on, checking in with everyone, and generally trying to help you get from “Once Upon A Time” to “I wrote 50,000 words!”

You can do this. Anything is possible. There is no such thing as writers’ block. If you get stuck, ask yourself this simple question: What’s the worst thing that can happen to these characters? Then write it and keep going, smiling to yourself over how clever you are. Ain’t it great?

Thank you all for joining me on this crazy journey and I look forward to hearing your stories in December! If you have any questions, concerns, fears, thoughts, musings, or anything else, either post it here or email me directly at worldwhispers@yahoo.com.

Happy Writin’s!
Gary . . .

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Institutional Memory...Work is torture (Out now from Medallion Press)