Guest Author - Colette

National Novel Writing Month is a great way to grab the bull by the horn and take off down the road toward completing your novel. Beginning November 1st each participant’s goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30th.
Most “real writer’s” like myself (yes I am being an elitist) stress over the craft of writing. The unfortunate result of this stress is what we writers refer to as writer’s block. Most people think of writer’s block as a lack of anything good to write about, but it isn’t. Simply put writer’s block is that belief that what you are thinking about writing, or actually write isn’t good enough which ends up making the idea of writng a Hurculean task.
National Novel Writing Month, commonly referred to as NaNoWriMo is all about output. This kamikaze approach gets you straight to the heart of the Golden Rule that every writer should live by… A writer writes.
Since NaNoWriMo only lasts for a 30 days the focus is totally on output. The ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is how much you write, not how well. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
So here’s the deal, go ahead and accept the fact that in all likely hood you probably will write a bunch of crap. But the whole goal is to force yourself to just write and embrace the idea that you are permitted to make mistakes. During NaNoWriMo forget about editing, JUST WRITE!
If that sounds difficult, think of thousands of others all around the world just like yourself sitting at their keyboards typing away furiously. These other writer’s aka “Wrimos” even form groups that meet meet throughout the month to share the joys, sorrows, and sometimes a glass of wine as they strive to reach the goal of 50,000 words.
In 2006, NaNoWriMo registered over 79,000 participants, opf that number, almost 13,000 of them reached the 50k word goal by the midnight deadline.
So how about it, if writing a novel is something that you’ve always wanted to do, join National Novel Writing Month. Sign-ups begin October 1, 2007. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.