That’s right ladies and gentlemen! It’s that time of year again. It’s NaNoWriMo! (One of the best name abbreviations ever!)

Yes, it’s National Novel Writing Month. As a quick definition. Each November is NaNoWriMo. People are encouraged to let their creative hold sway and write a novel during the month. The goal is fifty thousand words; which I think is about two hundred pages.

So, the reason I’m bringing this up, other than the fact that I’m encouraging you to participate, is because for the first time ever I’m going to be participating in the event. As an added bonus I’ll be posting my progress on the website.

Exciting, I know!

Now when I say I’ll be posting my progress, what I mean is: I will be posting the pages I get throughout the month—the actual pages, the actual novel.

A few disclaimers: 1) I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting—it will be at least once a week, but I’d like to post more (we’ll see). 2) Other than editing for grammar and spelling these pages will be raw (and I’ll probably miss more than a couple spelling and grammar mistakes). 3) Before anyone asks, I will be starting a new project. I’m going to pause all other projects so I can work on this. 4) I will do my best to finish the novel in the month, but if I don’t the posting of the pages will stop with the end of the month and regular service will resume. 5) As of right now I don’t know if I will continue the project (keep it around) after the month is over. Obviously if I like it I will.

I think that’s it.

I would like to say that there are mixed feelings about NaNoWriMo among the writing community. John Green firmly believes that you cannot write a novel in a month. I both agree and disagree with this. There is a lot that goes into writing a novel. Writing a good novel takes time, reading, re-reading, re-re-reading, editing, re-writing. The entire process of writing a good novel takes longer than a month, yes. But I believe you can get the story down, that first, fun-filled draft down in a month, if you work hard. Not to mention I just like the idea of devoting a month to creativity. At the very least it’s a fun exercise to jump start the stories in us. And it could help us get that first, fang-filled story—the one that’s latched on to you and won’t let you work on anything else until you work on it—out of us so we can move on to other stories; or it could help us see the flaws in the story we’ve been carrying around.

I think this is going to be fun.

So, for the month of November: Be yourself, be well. Write yourself, write well.