What's so incredible? Why is she so awesome? How does she do it?

It’s the end if October, and aside from the insane costumed blitzes and inevitable bouts if indigestion brought on by the sketchy mix of alcohol and Hallowe’en sweets that are about to transpire, the unstoppable arrival of autumn marks something more than just Christmas decorations at every storefront in the mall.  The final sunset of October prompts the first dawn of November, and with it, National Novel Writing Month will begin.  I for one, will be fighting my post-party hangover by penning those first few monentus words in this year’s attempt to crack the 50,000 word limit in just 30 days.

This will be my fourth attempt.  I have delved into the insanity that is NaNoWriMo thrice prior, and though I have failed to break the wordcount barrier in sufficient time, each November novella marks an improvement, and I find myself hoping once again this fresh attempt will bring enough progress to see me victorious at long last. Noble cause? Perhaps the endeavour is too eccentric to serve the cause of nobility, too outlandish to be considered a fruitful use of time and energy, but nonetheless I choose to soldier on whilst youth affords me a relatively free month to attempt the preposterous.

It is, of course, a ludicrous proposition.  Good literature takes years to manufacture and the absurd deadline mandated by NaNoWriMo is not only ridiculous, but infeasible for all but the most devoted 2% of registered participants.  In fact, if I had not met the writer of one of the fabled 50k word success stories, I would believe those that claim to have actually finished by December 1 were just a myth, some great Internet hoax created by secondary school English department burnouts with a penchant for vengence and a cruel sense of humour towards those of us gullible enough to try our hand at substantial writing.  But the prospect of under-one-month novel completion is not a mythical bedtime story, nor is it a legendary world record ballad taken from the annals of history.  It is a modern goal, one I intend to bluster desperately towards if not surpass altogether.

The reasons that NaNoWriMo is, however slightly, more practical than flying to China from New York in a washing machine have to do with the contest’s philosophy. You can write about whatever you want however often you want in whichever language you prefer provided you write. The idea is, by setting the obscene goal of a 50,000+ word novel by the impractical deadline of 30 days, you’ll spend some time every day cranking pages out to get your creative juices flowing in a creative burst meant to convince every participant they can be a novelist too. As the title of founder Chris Baty’s book on the subject explains: No Plot? No Problem!, and unless you take that mantra seriously, you’ve no hope for wading through to the light at the end of November. In the spirit of the event, it’s much easier to start on a fresh idea than start working on an old one, but the point is not to write a good book, the point is to write. NaNoWriMo’s debut featured 140 participants, almost all from the San Francisco Bay Area, 21 of which completed novels. Now the participants number more than 14,000. But the best part of NaNoWriMo comes after the initial excitement wears off. If you try your luck, you can use your foray into the world of literary brilliance to encourage the tortured artist in you: you have complete freedom to stop showering and shaving, to never go to the grocery store or do laundry, and to live under a pile of newspaper clippings and torn pages of notepads. It’s a beautiful time where we NaNoWriMites consume our body weight in caffeine, stop sleeping, and spend most of our time frantically clicking away on our laptops at 24-hour coffee shops. I highly recommend it.

As far as my personal track record goes, my first attempt at NaNoWriMo was not a complete failure. I finished the work, clocking in a word count of over 57,000 words, though it took me not thirty days but thirteen moths. I consoled myself, noting that a late finish is still a finish, and I was sure that the next year would bring me closer. I was wrong. After my completion of year one’s The Pleated Skirt Bare Essentials (consider yourself warned: not only is about 200 pages long, but it’s poorly crafted too), my next novel was to be of higher quality. That was the biggest mistake of NaNoWriMo year two, for in my determination to write something decent, I failed to write more than a page a day, and wound up with one fifth the word count I had projected by the end of the month. So by last year, year three, I figured I had learned my lessons. I now knew I had a novel’s worth of words in me from 2005, and that I would have to stop caring if those words were any good from 2006, so 2007 had to be an automatic pass. Wrong again. Thirty days flew by and I was stuck somewhere at 15,000 words, 5,000 of which I’ll guiltily admit were posted outside of the rules. But my 2007 novel-in-progress is more promising still than those of ‘05 and ‘06; it may not have been of the desired length, but it was still of better quality than try number one. So again I am filled with vigor, with jovial conviction that I will make the deadline this time around, with excited fervor as I count down the days until the checkered flag drops and I begin my month-long spiral out of control and into hermitism for the sake of a literary stunt.

Try four will see me take characters I already know and love from year one and weave them together with all the ruthless pilfering and humiliatons from my six months abroad. I’m hoping to adopt some interesting conventions in tentatively titled The Denim Miniskirt Bare Essentials, telling the story from one character’s point of view, then retelling the same series of events by the other’s. I’m sure you’ll be hearing all about 2008’s attempt in the days to come, but I’m not just telling you all this for your personal amusement. I’m telling you this for accountability. If I partook in the exercise quietly alone in my room, my failures would go unnoticed. But by making my intentions public, I am inviting my failures to be more painful, and my friends to hold me to my word. NaNoWriMo just got a little bit more serious.

As recommended, and as my personal tradition, I swear before you all that I will take on the NaNoWriMo challenge in earnest.  You are welcome to: follow my progress online as I update my status both here and on NaNoWriMo’s site as well, demand not only my current wordcount but proof of that quote at any time, and, should my efforts fall woefully behind or fail miserably along the way, mercilessly ridicule my futile stabs at literature, my foolhearty bravado and naïveté, or my atrocious writing, and anything else tease-worthy you should discover along the way, all with the understanding that should I succeed, you’ll never hear the end of my achievement until 2012 at least and be forced to endure constant bragging, taunting, one-upping, bohemian garb such as berets, quips of condescension, caffeine withdrawal, and impromptu excerpt readings throughout the Christmas Holidays. Or, if you’re ready for the bragging and the ridicule, the elation and the despair that comes from joining the club, you could try it for yourself, and finally cross “write a book” off your list of life goals.

That said, I thought you might like a few of the tastier quotes from my various NaNoWriMo attempts in the past, to give you an idea of how hastily these words are strung together, and why I personally find comedy much more forgiving than drama.

My internal clock was forced to focus on how many seconds passed minute to minute as I repressed the urge to claw Mark Jacobin in the face with my long uncut toenails.

I had learned at a very early age that there was no such thing as ducking out of the somewhat less than happy holidays, even if you broke a limb, lost a family member, and were suffering from mental instability. This crowd would not consider even childbirth or instantaneous death excusable. This crowd would not conceive that perhaps discovering what your Spanish, Facist, mad grandmother thought about oral sex was not on your ideal to-do list of the winter season.

Additionally, things tend to lead to a muddled confusion about whether or not you are exclusively dating yet and whether or not there is indeed a future with the other person, or whether you were too drunk/desperate/both to notice the other person is either extraordinarily unattractive, unworthy, or worse, perfect.

Following this speech was clapping, cheering, champagne, an explosion of eggplant innards, and another parent teacher conference.

Dr. Miezkovitch wasn’t much better than Dave. He was a half-blind, mostly-deaf, fully crazy old coot with no less than six different diplomas tacked up on his office wall. He raised his voice at everyone from his cell phone to his secretary and looked disdainfully at the file folder with my name written in small, unfriendly letters on the tab. The moment he opened his mouth, I knew he was a bitter and jaded figure who’d clearly lost his optimism in a war of some sort. He had the curmudgeony look about him as though he hated me. I liked him.

Our conversations were often like this. But I enjoyed them nonetheless. We tended to cut all the bullshit out of conversations. Neither of us spoke to fill the silence, we spoke with purpose. And that was a rare thing. Something worth savouring. Well, at least saving long enough to last the duration of a cigarette. After that, I figured, everyone was on their own.

The eggplant, in reality named Ms. Pat Sherman, was to all appearances a real therapist, but the more meetings passed, the clearer it became that she was unqualified for any career more complicated than one that involved stealing shopping carts. Even then her potential was still questionable at best.

Some things were much more important than humiliation. My pride was not one of them, but my Salem 22s were.

Collected like a true gentleman in the way that only equestrian polo players and rugby team members manage mid-match, William Henry did not panic. Instead he made a face. A charming one. Mr. Jacobin was less than pleased. His smile was nowhere near as charming.

Twins have to be god’s practical joke on the world. One day, god was on a people-making binge and got bored, so he came to the conclusion that it would be funny as hell if he made two of the same people. And thus twins were created, marking the beginning of the end of humanity. Fate must have had a field day, because ever since that moment, twins have been immediately followed by disaster

The temple stood steadfast before us and said without words, quite clearly, the old era has ended. Our poor and weary hearts were lifted by indiscriminate humming emanating from the structure, and our battered and lacerated feet were more than enthusiastic to agree, and nineteen smiles stretched wide and staring, expectant. We were home at last.

It’s a whole level of unanimity that I can’t seem to wrap my head around, as if we are building something some unseen architect has already designed. As if we see these blueprints in our dreams, but nowhere else.

Jacqueline Rosmart was a typical princess with curly golden blonde hair and a musical voice. She enjoyed poetry, cooking, sewing, and throwing parties. She did what her father, King Harold, asked of her, and was quite content to sit in the castle and wait for a knight to make an acceptable marriage proposition. She was beautiful and polite and a good dancer, and everyone loved her. Her older sister, Catalina, was the complete opposite.

Catalina didn’t say anything but instead began to chew on her left thumbnail in a shockingly un-princess-like manner, but she didn’t care. Derek read her reaction like wind, and quickly decided which way to turn the sail.

There was no protocol for situations like this in Lord Mercer’s dusty volume of The Courte At Pass: A Guide to All Things Proper. Jacqueline knew for a fact; she had looked it up quite a few times, and although there was protocol for situations in which the eldest daughter was kidnapped, and etiquette required for situations where the eldest daughter kills other family members in an act of betrayal, there was nothing about princesses who voluntarily left their duties, so Jacqueline was left confused and without knowing whose side she was to take.

Harold on the other hand, found himself getting less and less sleep each night. He was constantly grumpy and sleepy, but unable to rest. So, Harold did what any headstrong and honorable leader of a mid-size country would do: he asked his mother.