The Perils of October

My blog posts have been a bit erratic lately, but that’s not unusual for the month of October. Fall is my favorite time of year and I enjoy spending time outside, savoring the sights and smells of Autumn before they go away. (Fall doesn’t last long in Michigan) Best of all, the season culminates on Halloween, one of my favorite days of the year. As a result, my muse is firing away on all cylinders and it’s difficult to stay away from my manuscript -- especially since Halloween is the perfect time to be writing a story about Hogwarts and the wizardring world.

This year, however, I have the added workload of preparing for NaNoWriMo. Yep, I decided to go for it this year. I’ve known about NaNoWriMo and the challenge of "writing a novel in a month" for a couple of years now, but I’ve always declined to enter. My main reasons were:

1) I didn’t want to steal time away from my Hogwarts story.
2) I wasn’t ready to think about a new story.
3) I’m such a slow writer I couldn’t imagine writing 50,000 words in a month without having to throw away 90-95% of it anyway, so what was the point?

But these days I find myself more and more anxious to work on something I can actually publish, and NaNoWriMo seems like the perfect kick in the pants to jumpstart the process. I’ve had an idea for a story for a couple of years now (fantasy, magic, high school students) and this is my chance to lay the groundwork for my story.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks outlining and plotting, and as November approaches, I can feel it all coming together. I may still end up throwing away 50% of November’s writing once December rolls around, but that’s a number I can accept. Besides, I getting used to having to change 50% of chapters after my critique partner gets a hold of them anyway.

So I wish the best of luck to everyone else who’s participating in NaNoWriMo. I suspect this blog won’t be the only one to hit a lull in a week or so.