I am going to write a 50,000 word novel in 31 days

Yeah, you read that right.

Things are getting entirely too calm and routine around here. I'm settled in, I have my little room, with my desk set up and my work routine, and the days are just sailing by. I've been looking for a new challenge to get me fired up again - I've been running and biking a bunch lately and checking out duathlons - and, as always, casting around for what I am meant to do next.

I just saw a reference to National Novel Writing Month and it hit me like a ton of bricks: I'm a writer who doesn't write. That's why I feel so much like a fish out of water. Everything I have done has been something I sort of fell into, and because I'm quick enough to learn on the job, have managed to get paid to do. But nothing that I've done has truly felt like me using my natural gifts and skills. Writing has always been a hobby (witness this blog as an example), but it's one thing that I'm confident I do better than most, and actually enjoy doing for its own sake.

To be clear, the purpose of NaNoWriMo is not to write a finished novel in a month - that would be ridiculous, and the results would, almost certainly, be horrible by and large - but to finish a first draft in that amount of time. It takes place in November of this year, but I don't feel like waiting, so I'm starting tomorrow. 50,000 words seems like a nice round number for a novel, and totally achievable: that's just over 1,600 words a day for 31 days. Not easy, but not unrealistic, either.

Writing is a craft that requires a fair amount of discipline. My main problem as a writer has always been not sticking with a project and not writing every day. This exercise seems to be a golden opportunity to overcome that.

Also, by posting this on my blog for all to see, I'll have the added negative incentive of public ridicule if I slack off. So I'll post a word count each day for the next 31, and you all can come by and cheer me on - or, as the case may be, mock me mercilessly - as the days go by.

Oh, and I'm still considering doing that race.