Tomorrow begins NaNoWriMo! Woo-hoo!!

I have to tell you, I have never completed the NaNoWriMo in November. I love the concept dearly, but I have to believe that whoever thought writing 50,000 words in 30 days during a month which includes a major holiday was never a schoolteacher or anyone with a day job. I mean, come on.

And yet, people do it! (The slew of horribly rushed and minimally edited self-published ebooks every January is proof, amirite?)

And sometimes the NaNoWriMo yields extraordinarily wonderful results. (See also: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which was reputedly her NaNoWriMo project for three years.) So yes, people do it.

But I do not. With my familial and employment obligations, it would be utter madness for me even to try. But I heartily cheer on those who do! Genuinely! I am in awe and significant envy of those who have the ability to “win” NaNoWriMo in November. I just can’t manage that myself — at least, not at this precise time.

But I do still, sort of, participate. I make the commitment to just write something every day in November. Maybe it’s a blog post or a scene or a revision to a chapter in a novel I’m already working on, or maybe it’s something else like a poem or a flash story or a micro-essay, but I do it. And I will again this year. I’m working on an R&R of one novel and drafting another, so those are my more pressing manuscript projects. (But they are not my only ones, so I’ve got plenty to work on in case I get stuck on or finish those — both unlikely circumstances at this point, though knock on wood.)

But my earworm today is going to help us get pumped up for NaNoWriMo! Yes, it is! Do you know why??

I present to you The Proclaimers.