It’s October 31st, and you know what that means… synopsis day! Yep, screw the candy corn and sheet-ghosts, this is the last day before the kick-off of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It’s been a month since I decided to participate, so naturally I’m getting around to outlining my ideas today. I. Am. Not. Ready.

But hey, it’s NaNo. Who cares? The last time I engaged in this novel-in-a-month madness was three years ago. I went into it completely blind; no characters, no story idea (not much of one, anyway) and for sure no outline. And guess what… I made it anyway. Of course, I spent a lot of time meandering and not being sure of exactly what I was writing. And in the end, I put in a couple of days of furious scribbling that resembled the deranged doodles of a psychotic to end the “novel” in a most unsatisfying way. But still I managed to barf out 50,000 words.

This year I’m going into it at least a tiny bit better informed. I have an idea of who my principle characters will be. I know the setting, some of the plot, and even have a vague notion of a few scenes.  By sundown today, I hope to have a skeletal structure for the story that’ll guide me through the what do I write this morning blues. After that, it’s all open road.

The goal of 50,000 words means typing a steady stream of at least 1667 words per day, or about 5 pages. That’s significantly more than I usually write, which is exactly the point of the exercise. Maybe something will come from it, maybe not. (Can you tell how hard I’m trying not to get invested?) Whatever the result, I’ll have another novel for my drawer. If you include last time, that makes 2 and a half.

So if you’re not doing anything in November, why not join me and a few hundred thousand others? It’s way more fun to make it a social event. Go to http://www.nanowrimo.org and sign up. Once you’ve done that, visit my NaNo page and become one of my writing buddies! It won’t hurt, I promise.

No much, anyway.