The Tale of the Bleeding Fingertips

I have a confession: I’m afraid that I won’t be doing much – if any – new writing for the blog this month.

Before you decide to make me attend the Headmaster’s (or Mistress’ – I’d much prefer that option) I do have a good excuse. At least, I think it’s a good excuse. I’ve entered NaNoWriMo.

For those unfamiliar with the term, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. On November 1st 1999, twenty-one people committed themselves to write a 50000 word novel by midnight on November 30th. Six of them succeeded. It’s taken place every year since. On November 1st 2008, 119,301 people committed themselves to the same goal; 21,683 succeeded.

This year, I’ve chucked my hat in the ring too.

As the organisers say, this is about quantity, not quality. The idea is to force yourself to forgo the endless tweaking and micro-editing that normally happens. Just get the first draft out there, the crap as well as the good stuff, and then edit and revise in December.

So I’m not going to have a great deal of time for other work this month, I’m afraid. The going rate for a successful entrant is 1667 words a day. Today is day seven, and by midnight GMT, I’m supposed to have written 11667 words. At the time of writing (7.05pm GMT) I’m at 11019, so I’ve a bit of work to do yet. I won’t dally any longer then.

If you’re interested to know more about the project, pop on over to www.nanowrimo.org. And if you want to keep tabs on how I’m doing, my profile page is available to read here.

(By the way, my novel is tentatively called ‘The Sisters’ – and it’s a tale of lust, betrayal, infidelity and revenge. And yes, it will have lots of sex)