Bettering oneself through hard work, part one: NaNoWriMo

Ever one for setting myself a challenge, and in the spirit of embracing a better, more productive self, I have finally embraced the thorny branch that is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short.

The concept around NaNoWriMo (how tedious will typing all those capitals become in the following month?) is to write a novel, containing no less than 50,000 words in one month. You’re not allowed to start beforehand, apart from outlining or any backwork you need to do to prepare. Come midnight on the 31st October, the process starts. Come midnight on the 30th November, the process ends, with hopefully 50,000 words to show for it. The key here is quantity, not quality.

As I’m sure most fairly literate people have considered, I have always thought that there is a book in me. Certainly, I can generate wordy blog posts with the best of them; perhaps November this year shall be the testing of those aspirations. Perhaps I do have a book in me, and it’s bloody awful.

We shall see. Onwards and Upwards! Why do something the easy way and put it off without feeling guilty, when you can strive towards a hard task that you can tell everybody else you’re doing, and thus make it harder to fail at? I really ought to apply that process to quitting smoking. Maybe after I’ve written my 50k word magnum opus.