Spare a thought for me...NaNoWriMo

We never said our love was evergreen or as unchanging as the sea,
but if you can still remember, spare a thought for me...

Andrew Lloyd Webber's internationally famous, and close to my heart musical, Phantom of the Opera approaches love and heart break and all those dramatic elements tied to love.

And no offence to Andy, but my New Year's resolution to not fall in love again this year was well met with only light-hearted attempts to be nice to the male population. Of course after the devastating and tumultuous events of last year, I could have wanted no less. And it was all for the best, really.

It's now November first, which can only mean two things: 

1. That the year is fast reaching it's end and soon my forced year of clarity will be over, whether that's a good or bad thing regardless of how therapeutic the entire thing was,

2. and that one of my favourite yearly events is about to start! No, I don't mean Christmas as there's still another 25 days before the festivities for my second favourite (after Halloween) holiday begins - No, I'm talking about NaNoWriMo! That it, National Novel Writing Month.




For those of you who aren't familiar with the NaNo tradition, it goes like this:

From November 1st until November 30th a forum begins online with participants across the globe competing to complete 50,000 words of fiction (or non-fiction, whatever floats your boat, really) before the time limit is up. Now, it's a charity based event so participants are free to contribute to the Nano fund by donating to the Offices of Letters and Light (the Nano team) and get themselves a cool t-shirt or bunch of stickers, but it's non-obligatory so you don't have to. Winners - anyone who completes the task of 50K before it clicks into December - get bragging rights, a flashy certificate, and a voucher for a free self-publication of whatever you've written with the next year to tinker and edit. Pretty cool, right? 

2012 will be my fourth year in a row competing since 2009. I completed in 2009 and 2010, but due to post-thesis trauma last year I only made it half-way through the month before my creative mind collapsed and I descended into a life of exhausted leisure until Christmas. 

That will NOT happen again. Trust me, I've been kicking myself all year for not just soldiering on and carrying on. The English in me was justly disappointed. 

So, NaNo starts today and boy am I more than ready to rumble! Bring it on, all or nothing!

I plan to keep you posted here, with regular updates on how I'm going again and story excerpts. Feel free to drop my a line with ideas, scene requests, advice, and constructive criticism - I'd love to hear from you!

My NaNo page can be found here: 

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/novels/isis-impending/edit

And to all my fellow writers, as ever, may muses be with you! 

Until next time,

Mara

Spare a thought for me...

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