Does writing a novel in a month sound crazy to you?

In less than a week, National Novel Writing Month is starting, and I’m participating. I’m very excited, but also terrified. 

For anyone who doesn’t know, NaNoWriMo is a sort of writing marathon where you try to write a 50000 word novel in a month. If you write, I recommend you google it and sign up. There’s a young writer’s program as well; if you’re under 13 and want to set your own word count goal, that’s where you’ll want to go. 

To me, it sounds manageable, but I don’t know yet. We’ll see…

I have an idea and some characters lined up, but I hope that this weekend I will have time to scratch out a rough outline. 

I dislike outlining too heavily. It seems like there is no room for surprises in a story if you already know every single tiny movement your characters are going to make. It’s like they’re being monitored as suspects for a crime. Characters have a right to freedom! Or they should, at least.

But I think just the vaguest of guides is probably a good idea, since I get writer’s block about every other time I sit down and work on a story.

Here is a list of the things that will help me survive next month:

1. Halloween candy! The day after Halloween seems like perfect timing for NaNoWriMo. 

2. My notebook full of character interviews and ideas, which I will probably refer to every other second.

3. This blog. I can post my frustrations, and sometimes writing something down, I will automatically think of a solution.

4. Some carefully selected books that will hopefully make me say, “I want to go write something like that!” And then I will. Well, at least I’ll write something. (I’ll post reviews on the books sometime in December.)

5. I’ll take a tiny notebook everywhere. (This won’t be hard to remember, since I already do.) Usually, almost every single thing I do inspires an idea, so I hope this continues to work so effectively.

That’s everything I can think of right now, and good luck to all of you fellow NaNoers out there!