The calm before the storm

I've reactivated my NaNoWriMo account and will be participating this year. My original intent had been not to do so, but the truth is, I have a lot of fun with NaNo, and this year I don't feel as stressed to actually make the 50,000 word mark. That's not to say I'm not going to aim for it, but it's not like last year, where I was determined to make up for falling short in 2002.

My favorite part of NaNo is the forums, which I highly recommend checking out, even if you aren't participating. By mid-November, they go completely wacky and I love some of the ideas people put out for stretching their novels to that magical 50,000-word mark. My tactic, some of you may have noticed, is food. The first year I participated, my original character became a gourmet cook and cooked, cooked, cooked her way through the novel; needless to say, with all of the cooking there was, there was also lot of eating (also a random singing of "Moon River", but, whatever, desperate times call for desperate measures). Last year, I did a fanfic novel, X-Men, and there wasn't quite so much eating; fanfic, I think, is easier to do for NaNo -- it really does write itself.

So after trying original novel in 2002 (still unfinished), fanfic in 2003 (also unfinished), this year I'm going for historical fiction. I've decided to throw research out the window and just write the parts I know off the top of my head; post NaNo is for accuracy. I just feel that I will never write this story unless there's some kind of deadline and I should go for it while the enthusiasm for it still exists.

Anyway, good luck to everyone trying NaNo! Happy writing to you! Remember, you only need 1,700 words a day to make it through! (p.s. Ignore the AIs who come out every year and have word-counts of 25,000 on the first day; no dbubt, their characters are doing nothing but reading menus and cookbooks to each other).