I can’t believe I haven’t come across this before now. It seems I’ve been letting my attention slip away from all of the new and cool crazes in my post-college, married life.

Anyway, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a (multi) nation-wide event in which many thousands of insane people each try to write a 50,000-word short novel, from scratch, in November. After excitedly reading through the site, including many of the forum posts, I found myself halfway through a detailed plot outline before I started thinking rationally about this. 50,000 words in 30 days? That’s 1667 words (or nearly five pages) a day, with no break.

I can’t even manage to take a vitamin every morning for a week!

I do think it’s a very cool idea. This is a terrific use of the Internet to bring a large group of like-minded people together to do something passionate and downright amazing. And the support network they’ve built around it is nothing short of stunning. There are local events organized throughout the month just about anywhere you might find yourself writing a novel.

In junior high school, I wanted to be a pulp novelist for a short while (yes, the random obsessions can be traced back at least that far). While the career plans eventually changed, I never did lose respect for the written word, though I more commonly find myself on the reader’s side of the relationship. If only for the sake of my erstwhile self, I would love to participate, but I know I just won’t make time to commit to such a large undertaking this year. Oh well, there’s always next year!