NaNoWriMo 2010 Begins

Each November, an organization known as the "Office of Letters and Light" conducts an Internet competition called "National Novel Writing Month" (which is affectionately known as "NaNoWriMo").  Those who sign up to take part in this event will attempt to write 50,000 words of original fiction between November 1 and November 30, 2010.

Those who complete this goal will be dubbed "Winners" and will get some token prizes.  These include a printable certificate with your name, graphics (similar to the one at the left) to post on your site, and discounts with a number of merchants who offer products and services for writers.  The most significant freebie you get is the opportunity to have Amazon.com's "CreateSpace" service produce a printed paperback copy of your finished NaNoWriMo novel.  I didn't take advantage of that particular benefit last year because I never got the novel finished and what I had in those 50,000 words (to be quite honest) was terrible.

This year, I started preparing in September.  I began writing my notes and character sketches, and even fired up a copy of Dramatica Pro 4.0 to help me brainstorm and gather my thoughts.  My plan this year is to actually complete the entire novel (which will likely be more like 80,000 words) and have something I can officially print into book form via CreateSpace.

If you'd like to follow my progress on the book, here's the link to my profile on the site.  (The site's been really, really slow lately, so don't be surprised if it doesn't work that well.)