So, it’s almost November. That means new monthly spotlights. It also means the entire writing world online is about to be consumed by NaNoWrimo.

For those not in the know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. Basically, it’s to challenge yourself to writing a 50k word novel in 30 days. Sounds hard, right? But thousands and thousands of people do it every year, with most coming back year after year to try again.

I did my first NaNo in 2009. You might know the story — Love and Other Socially Acceptable Emotions. I chose to do that story because it was lighter and fluffier than my usual story. I thought that would make it easier, and it would probably be the only time I could talk myself into doing such a chick lit plot. It worked. I finished up during the Thanksgiving weekend, despite being in college at the time. I guess it helped that I had a pretty light course load that semester.

In 2010, I decided to be a story called What Didn’t Happen, a plot that I had adopted from the NaNo forums and adapted based on another idea I had. I wrote around 12k, but couldn’t finish. I blame my inability to write then on the fact that I was doing basically three plays that month at my theatre. That’s a huge workload, for those who don’t know.

So for my third year doing NaNo, I’m going to attempt to finish What Didn’t Happen. It’s now at 15k in five chapters, which I won’t count toward my total. I’ll be posting updates here, on twitter and on LiveJournal about my monthly progress, so feel free to follow/add those. I’d love to hear from others who are participating. That’s what’s so great about NaNo — the sense of community. I hope everyone else who participates has a fantastic time, and I can’t wait to read your novels 😉