Can you smell the NaNoWriMo in the air?

Ah, November, that special time of year when the smell of pumpkin spice mixes with the smell of cinnamon pine cones and the radio starts playing Christmas music and the brisk air turns brisker (except in Arizona, where the hot summer air turns into perfect fall air, but I digress). Maybe it is because my birthday falls in this month, and maybe it is the magic of Thanksgiving, 

For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. During this month, novelists and aspiring novelists around the globe struggle to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days.

Those of you who do long-division in your head have already figured out that, to achieve this goal, you must write an average of 1,667 words per day. For some, that may sound easy. For everyone else, that is a huge challenge.

You might be wondering why anyone would afflict this on themselves. I think everyone does it for a different reason. Many have wanted to write a book their entire lives and are finally committing to it. Others just want to have some fun. Still others just want to be able to say they did it. Whatever the reason, I think they are good ones.

The book I just created was a NaNo attempt, though it turned out to be 90,000+ words long and took 2 months to complete. Still, I don't think I would have gotten that far without NaNoWriMo helping me focus. I'm using this year to write book 2!

So, while many of you may be getting nostalgic and anxious for the coming holidays or just the cooler weather, I'll be holed up, hammering away at a keyboard putting words to paper.

It is, after all, a magical time of year.

You can track my NaNoWriMo2017 progress on Twitter or on my NaNo profile page.