Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo and successfully “completed a 50,000 word novel”:www.manton.org/2005/12/5… in one month. It was a great experience, but when someone conducted an informal survey on 43things of who would be doing it again this year, I answered that it was just something I wanted to do once in my life, like running a marathon, and I wouldn’t be doing it again.
And yet, before November rolled around again, the idea for a novel started growing in my mind. I had pretty much decided to go for it again. On the 1st of the month I wrote the opening and started organizing notes for the characters and plot.
But that same night I was sketching with friends at a coffee shop instead of writing. “Paul Adam”:www.untameduniverse.net and I talked about 24-Hour Comic Day, NaNoWriMo, and side projects. That conversation made me realize that I have a bunch of stuff I want to work on right now, and writing a novel which I have no immediate plan to publish just can’t fit into my schedule right now. NaNoWriMo is an all-consuming thing – you have to drop everything to finish it.
The story and characters I came up with have some potential, though. Instead of cramming it into a month, I may work on it a bit over the next year or two.
