NaNo, NaNo, It's Off to WRITE I Go!

So I know I have one billion and twenty-three other endeavors going on right now, but this challenge is too tempting to walk away from.

November is, apparently, National Novel Writing Month. Or, if you prefer, NaNoWriMo. The goal is to write 50,000 words entirely in the month of November. The idea is, in a word, awesome.

A global community of writers individually write themselves silly and document their progress online. Last year, I believe 30,000 writers met the goal. Can you believe that? 30,000 novels produced in a single month???

I feel that my chances of getting published are pretty slim. They just got even smaller, knowing that 30,000 novels were written in November alone, last year (and that's not even considering all the writers finishing books not part of the NaNoWriMo phenomenon, in November and all other months of the year).

Afterall, I have not been wildly successful in getting my first novel (Like Joe and Marilyn, 70,000 words, commercial fiction) noticed. And sheesh, that one took me seven years to write. Granted, I was also having babies and getting a B.A. and an M.A. and teaching college and teaching high school and parenting and waitressing and blah blah blah...

But still, now, I'm attempting to pop out another book in thirty days? After the first one took seven years?

Sure. Why not. Call me crazy. Along with the thousands of other nutty writers participating.

The emphasis is on quantity of words produced over quality, anyway. And it should really be a neat undertaking to force myself to write every single day this month.

Because while I love it, writing is a luxury I can't usually afford.

But here's the thing... if I'm serious about being a career writer, I can't treat it as a hobby. I have to give it the time it deserves.

And even if the next thirty days produce nothing but thirty days worth of crappy writing, at least I will have shown myself that I DO have the discipline necessary to be a novelist.

Discipline? I think so. Only the next thirty days will tell.

Talent? Well, that's a whole other story.

But I do have the heart. That much I know.

So, if you are interested in joining me and writing your own self delirious, click here.

If you yourself are not interested in this bout of literary insanity, but you'd like to show me some support by checking on my progress, you can click here.

And if you aren't particularly interested in any of this... here's a story for YOU (which, I promise, I did not make up).

Late Saturday night, just past midnight, so moving into Halloween morning, technically, my brother and I were on our way back from our restaraunt jobs at the beach. We're jabbering along, enjoying hypothetical, philisophical conversation that may or may not have been partly fueled by alcohol consumed by one of us (not the driver) when out of absolutely nowhere, these huge DOGS, wild dogs, come flying out of the woods across Rt. 50.

So I brake as fast as I possibly can, which was nowhere near fast enough, and THUD, I hit the first of the two creatures head on.

I won't get into all the grizzly details, but I kid you not when I say that thing had a deathwish, to use my brother's words. I mean, this puppy SAILED through the air before coming to it's sad and, for my brother and I, shocking, demise.

I was screaming my head off, and then laughing, as I tend to crack up in really inappropriate scenarios occuring in the ridiculous happenings that seem to plague my life.

I really thought it was a wolf.

I mean, who hits a WOLF! On Halloween? Seriously?? Do we even have them around here?

Yes, this really is my life.

I have since been told it probably was a coyote, which makes me feel NO better about the situation. Whatever it was, the animal was the size of a husky (WAY bigger than a fox, or Johnny's helpful suggestion, an armadillo), at least, and after I killed it dead with my little Honda Fit, there was NO WAY I was going back to check that bad boy's corpse out. Particularly since there were two of them, and the other one was still alive, and, so far as I could guess, probably pretty irritated that I just killed its partner.

Anybody else feel like the only thing missing in your life to turn it into a slap-stick comedy movie is a co-star along the lines of Chris Farley or Jimmy Fallon?

Or am I the only one?