Erica's #70 - Participate in NaNoWriMo (11/28/2013)

So, for anyone who hasn't heard of NaNoWriMo - it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It happens every year in November, and the challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days in November.  That breaks down to about 1,667 words per day.  If you're writing in paragraphs, that's about two pages in word (12 point font, single spacing, normal margins).  Doesn't sound too bad, right?

Well it is tough.  And there are about 309,000 other "wrimos" who know that feeling now too.  I had a rough concept in my head from a short story I wrote when I was probably 11 or 12 years old - typed it out on our very first computer that my dad bought when he went back to college, and printed that bad boy out on that dot-matrix printer.  I can just hear that beautiful noise now...

I actually think I have a copy of that story somewhere printed out.  Someday, I'll find it.  So I had a concept, but I am not much of a planner.  I hated having to create outlines for anything in school, because it seems like such a waste of time to me.  If I'm going to do something, doing it once is enough.  That theme also translates to checking my work.  I rarely do it.

So the moral of that story is that I just jumped right in and started writing.  The story is set in Montana, and is about 6 friends in their senior year of high school - four boys and two girls.  The title of the novel is Rush - it's loosely themed around Montana's gold rush, and the fact that the kids are exploring an abandoned gold mine.  The six kids have been inseparable for almost a decade, and they are contemplating what they want from life after high school.  They're an adventurous bunch, and in this story, they end up finding an entrance to an old mine and exploring it.  There's adventure, danger, and a love story - what more could you expect from a novel?

I have no doubt that it isn't the next great American novel, but hey, it turned into an actual novel.  I finished it late on Thanksgiving Day, at just over 50,000 words.  The first six chapters are devoted to one character each, and there are, I believe 25 other chapters in the book.  I'm so glad its finished!  It felt good to validate it one last time in the word count checker on the website (www.nanowrimo.org), and get the notification that I was a winner!  Anyone who writes 50,000 words or more is a winner though, and you don't get much except a fancy little certificate to print out saying that you won.  And that all-important feeling of accomplishment!