My favorite time of the year is here. Fall? Well, yes and no. I do love fall. Especially here in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. It's a gorgeous place to be. Crisp, cool air. The beautiful transition from greens to oranges and reds. We get hot tea, soups, hoodies, blankets, kitties that snuggle more because they're cold...
But that's not why it's my favorite time of the year.
It's NaNoWriMo time!
NaNo-What-Mo?
National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo. NaNo. 30 days of literary abandon. Temporary insanity. Whatever you want to call it.
NaNoWriMo is in the month of November. Hundreds of thousands of writers across the globe come together to participate in attempting to write 50,000 words in 30 days. There's also a fabulous Young Writer's Program with curriculum for school teachers.
I participated in my first NaNo in 2010. Twelve years ago! I didn't do much that first year, barely writing 2,000 words, but I was hooked. The next year I joined up with the local group in Columbia, SC, met a few of my best friends, and managed to write the 50k words. A couple of years later, I moved to Florence, SC, and took over the fledgling Pee Dee region as the Municipal Liaison (ML), a fancy word for the volunteer community organizer.
In 2018, I moved back to Tennessee due to life circumstances. I hated to leave my group of intrepid WriMos, but had to. There wasn't a region near where I moved, so I joined the Tennessee Elsewhere region. When an ML stepped down in 2020, I applied to become an ML again. It's a bit of a different dynamic because the Elsewhere Region is mostly virtual, which has been fine the last two years, but I also miss connecting in-person with writers.
NaNoWriMo is one of the craziest times of my year, and I absolutely love it. I could literally go on for hours about the impact that NaNo has had on my life, but I don't have that kind of space here.
I'll be posting more about NaNo the next couple of months. It's officially PREPtober, which means I *should* be figuring out what I'll be writing in November. But I'm what you call a "Pantser," meaning that I fly by the seat of my pants. I typically don't plot, at least not in an organized manner.
I haven't published anything that I've written. I'm stuck in the "I hate editing" stage, but I've written a lot of words, rife with potential. And you can't edit a blank page (which I'll talk about in my next blog).
I can't contain my excitement. I'm rotating through my hoard of NaNoWriMo shirts, wearing my NaNo bracelets, and thinking about writing ALL the time.
It really is the most wonderful time of the year!
Do you participate in NaNoWriMo? Tell me about your experience or what you'll be writing!