NaNoWriMo 2016

Wow! I can't believe that there is just a little over a week before Nanowrimo begins. For those of you out there who are not familiar with it, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's a time when all the crazy writers or wanna-be writers, come together to see if they can crank out a novel, or at least 50,000 words of it, in only one month. It starts November 1 and ends at midnight, November 30.

You can plan ahead, write your storyline, your synopses, names and descriptions of all your characters, build your world, etc., but you cannot write a single word of the novel itself until the first strike of the clock on November 1. And if you make your goal of 50,000 words, you are automatically a winner! OK, no prizes here, but you can still call yourself a winner.

This year I told myself that I was going to be prepared. By the time the 1st of November rolled around, I would have all of the above done and maybe more. LOL! But you know, life got in the way and I procrastinated (hard to believe, I know). And now it's only about a week away and I am still just fleshing out my story! I am excited about it though and hopefully I can knock out at least a vague outline of the story with its Inciting Incident, Midpoint, Arc, Pushes and Pinches, yada yada yada, before the date comes around.

What does this have to do with fountain pens you ask? Well, earlier this year, August to be exact, I self-imposed a 1/2 NaNoWriMo to see if I could eek out a mere 25,000 words in one month using only a fountain pen and paper. (See my "Just Keep Writing blog on August 17.) I used a different fountain pen and ink each day, made little corrections or notes with my Monteverde Limonada in Torino Red with various colors of red ink, and wrote in my beautiful purple Leuchtturm 1917 notebook. And guess what, I did it! I met my goal. But it was really hard. I had to constantly remind myself to relax my hand and on some days I broke the writing into two sessions in order to make it through. So, unfortunately for me, this little experiment may have proven that I will probably not be able to pull off writing all 50,000 words with fountain pen alone.

I am, however, writing all my planning info down with fountain pen. I bought a handy, little dark red Apica CD-10 notebook from Goulet, which I carry around with me everywhere along with my my Jinhao 750 Flower Red fountain pen. They're even on my bedside nightstand in case I have one of those last minute light bulb ideas when I'm trying to go to sleep. I'm using it as kind of a dumping ground to write down any and all ideas about storyline, characters, plotting methods, resources, things to research, and any other short notes about my novel. Once I have my story more fully formed and my main characters figured out, I plan to use my Clairefontaine French-Ruled notebook to pull everything together into a nice cohesive plan - all in fountain pen, of course.

I really, really, really would like to write NaNoWriMo all in fountain pen, and I still haven't totally ruled it out as a possibility. But just to finish 25,000 words was quite a hand and time commitment. And I can type fast. Really fast. So...

I'm very excited about my novel though. It's called "Mynd Control." I kind of don't want to give much else away about it yet. Just suffice it to say that it's about exactly what it sounds like and the misspelling of 'mind' is intentional and purposeful.

If you're interested in learning more about NaNoWriMo, just go to nanowrimo.org. And if you're crazy enough, come join me in November for a writing experience unlike any other. If you don't know what to write, just remember what Alfred Hitchcock said, "Drama is life, with the dull bits cut out." Just write about life.

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