Does anyone here participate in the yearly NaNoWriMo challenge? The National Novel Writing Month begins sign ups Oct. 1st and starts November 1st. The Challenge? To write 50,000 words in one month. I did it last year with my roomate and it was so fun. We got really competitive and were trying to out write each other. Yeah, my story / short novel sucked but it's suppose to. The point of the challenge is not to write a prize winning novel but to prove to yourself that you can write a novel. The website is amazing. If you love literature and writing it is the best place ot be in november. They have chatrooms depending on what type of a novel you are writing. I was writing this weird science fiction, fictional historical period, post modern disaster but it was hilarious. I would go on teh science fiction forum and there would be a guy who supposedly knows everything anout sci fi who would answer anyones plot and character questions like "Can a quad laser exist on a D4 Titanium balcon jet flyer?" and then teh guy would seriously respons "OF course not, the Titanium balcon jet flyer which first appeared in so-n-so's novel "Space something" new that hte laser would weigh down the jet which flies at the speed of blah blah blah..."and this guy would go on for a page! All the forums were like that. I would pose a question like "Could james Dean have attended the same party as Marlan Brando?" and I got all these responses with links to actual sources about the Dean-Brando connection. I could tell you a whole history between the two actors now.

Then there are the forums for frustrated writer with writer's block. My favortie was "Letter to my character" forum. Every post went like this "Dear Jet, Why did you kill yourself? I was going to make you a larger then life character! Now I have no one to write about accept that bitch Margaret and damn it if I dont't know where to go with that. Thanks alot Jet!" they also have Letter's to the author like, "Dear author, the hell did you write me into this novel for? I was here three pages and then you blew me up and had my guts eaten by a squid monster! That's messed up man. Last time I ever enter one of your novels." I guess these forums help jog your block but I wasted way too much time just reading them and laughing my ass off. Totally entertaining. Plus at the end of the month you can proudly say - "I wrote a novel" (a shitty rushed novel but you can leave out that part). Then you can spend the rest of the year trying to make it good. HA HA!

They send you weekly emails telling you how many words you should be at and there is a podcast. Check out rules and how it works at their site http://www.nanowrimo.org/ and look foward to signing up - See ya there!

--Sue