Do you believe in making life (or bucket) lists? I tend to go back and forth about whether they're pretentious nonsense or really smart ways to set goals. Sure, I scribbled a few columns worth of life goals listed on the back of a pay stub envelope somewhere, and maybe even typed it up once. Every time I rediscover it, the goals change depending on my mood (and my age), but one thing that's always been the same is this: I want to write a book.
Now, is my best most perfect book going to be a novel? I'm not sure. But seeing that I'm almost 31 and bookless, (and let's face it, in a state of post-wedding-planning and childless bliss just reveling in free time ... go on and punch me in the nose, I deserve it) this is the month that I'm going to try and write a novel, thanks to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It's so official, and has its own website, and damn it we're not getting any younger.
I have not entirely figured out how to use their website but hope to meet some other people who are taking on writing a novel in Chicagolandia and beyond and to chronicle some of it here. So.
Day One
The instructions on NaNoWriMo say NOT TO EDIT yourself as you write, but instead to just let it all come out and deal with it later. Well, that's just not how I roll. Editing is the best part for me--going back in and making everything just so. And so I wrote without stopping for about 1,300 words and then went back and fleshed it out and primped it up until I hit 1,699. So far, we have a sci-fi love story involving disasters and a prep school. They make you give it a title, so the novel is currently called People in Hell Want Ice Water. Because, when you think about it, they probably do.
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