NaNoWriMo

or National Novel Writing Month.

In two days I will begin the journey of 50,000 words.  The goal is to reach this lofty word count in 30 days.  I'm feeling nervous.  50,000 words is a lot of words.  I read somewhere that the average YA book is around 80,000.  Ask me to read that in a day and I could do it.  Piece of cake, actually.  But to write just over half of that in 30 days?  Minus Sundays.  Scary.

I'm also feeling excited.  4 years ago a story popped into my head.  I wrote a page at best.  I sent it to a friend who gave me lots of good feedback.  And then life continued on and my little story sat at a page length for quite sometime.  The story, however, never left.  The heroine kept nudging me.  The hero started pestering me.  The villain taunted me.  So I started again only reaching a few more pages before letting life take over yet again.  Like before, the story and the people in it haunted me.  This summer I knew I needed to give myself over to the story.  For four years these people and the events in their lives have sat patiently, waiting for me to get my act together.  Over the course of a few weeks this summer I upped my word count to nearly 10,000 words which is the equivalent of about 27 pages.

I sent these pages (minus a few at times) to a few deeply trusted souls.  It honestly terrified me.  I love my story.  It's my baby.  It went out with a warning that it was the roughest of rough drafts and the only things I wanted were a) questions about the characters or plot to help me see what I'm missing in my story and b) loads of positive feedback.  No plot consistency corrections.  No grammar.  No spelling.  (Hey.  I'm needy like that.)  Let me just say right now that I sent it to the 3 kindest people.  You know who you are.  I had such lovely feedback that when Cami asked if I wanted to do this crazy NaNoWriMo thing, I jumped at the chance.

I am really looking forward to seeing the end (and most likely the beginning) of my story.  It's special to me.  It's s something I want to give to my kids.  Which is my ultimate goal.  Something tangible and meaningful to leave my kids.  Publishing has never been the ultimate goal.  But, I won't lie.  It would be legendary.  (Sorry. Lots of HIMYM lately)

Over the next 4-5 weeks, you can expect a messier house.  Hair hiding in a hat.  Face relatively free of makeup.  A slight crazed look in my eye.  Notebooks and note cards and Dr. Pepper as constant companions.  Lack of attention in conversations.  This is it.  My sweet little book is ready to grow.  I am ready for adventure.