What I’m doing in November

Next month, I will be mostly writing a novel. I’ve taken up the challenge that is NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – in which you commit to writing a sustained piece of fiction of at least 50,000 words.

There are three reasons I’m doing it.

1. I have a little monkey on my back. She’s very small and silky, has big, sincere eyes and a little sibilant voice, and she’s fond of telling me that a cancer book is all very well, I’m just writing what I know, but I could never write fiction. It’s time for her to go.
2. I have a new book, on what it’s like to survive cancer, in mind, but it’s not quite ready to get itself onto the screen yet. So I’m going to use NaNoWriMo as a way of getting into the habit of writing my daily 1000+ words again. (1,666.6 recurring, to be precise.)
3. I told my 16 year old son Ned I was considering doing NaNoWriMo. By the time I got home and emailed him the details of the website, he’d already signed up. So at that point I was honour-bound to do the same. (Alan is thinking of having a crack at it too.)

So, I’m both raring to go and wondering what on earth I’m doing to myself. I have an idea, a title, and a notebook full of plans and scribbles and characters and ideas. I’ll keep you posted as to how it’s going. If you’d like to join the madness, sign up here.