Hey all. I’m participating in NaNoWriMo which is what the cool kids call National Novel Writing Month. If you’re not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it’s both an awesome 501(c)(3) and a month long writing contest where us masochistic few write a 50,000 word novel by 11:59 on November 30th. Here’s NaNoWriMo’s mission statement:

National Novel Writing Month believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.

NaNoWriMo (the organization) also does other great educational and creative programs and you should check them out right after you read my blog!

November 1, 2017:

Started the first day of this month-long marathon pretty casually. I had a morning appointment downtown, then met some friends for lunch, before heading over to meet my agent and talk about how we’re going to make hundreds upon hundreds of dollars selling my books. He had updates on a couple of projects we’re shopping around and we talked about some future stuff. Good author/agent conversation. Good coffee.

I mentioned I’m doing NaNoWriMo to get my weird out before I start work on some more marketable prospects. He expressed tentative support for my alien brain process as long as I get him the materials I owe him for a proposal while I’m listening to Iron Maiden and thinking about Santa Claus. I agreed to this because I like to be an agreeable author and he is going to make us hundreds upon hundreds of dollars selling my books

After our meeting I decided to walk home instead of doing what a normal not alien brained person would do. It was a nice afternoon in Portland and only a little over 5 miles. I figured the time alone wandering the streets of my city would help percolate my alien brain juices and I was right. I spent some time thinking about listening to Iron Maiden (I forgot my earbuds so this was a music free 5+ mile stroll) and thinking about Santa Claus. I thought about a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles covered in ashes and full of skeletons and demons. I thought about elves on motorbikes and the Backstreet Boys, standing a sad suburban vigil in a fictional mall. Yeah. That’s the stuff. This book is going to be real weird. 

While I didn’t get any words down today, I got excited about my project and worked through some of the finer points of my plot.

It’s important, even in the mad dash race to the finish line of NaNoWriMo that you take the time to daydream about your story. You might not need a 5+ mile walk from the Willamette River to far SE Portland to do that but if you do, hopefully the weather is still nice.