May 2007: Sand Chigger "PerNoWriMo"

I keep getting this "Maybe you should write a book?" message from people as diverse as Ganymede/Omar to Kevin's wife, Rebecca Modesta. So maybe I'll do just that.

I made a half-hearted attempt at participating in last fall's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Over four days during the first six days of November, I managed to write a total of 3,674 words...completely unimpressive and woefully short of the 50,000 needed by the end of the month to be able to say that one had completed the contest. On average that works out to about a thousand words a day for the days I actually wrote something. In actual fact, the volume of my output ranged from a minimum of 107 words on the first day to a maximum of 2,065 words on the third. (970 on the second day and 532 on the fourth, in case anyone was wondering.) From about the 6th I let work and other commitments get in the way and by the time I came back to the thing, I was so far behind my projected schedule that I just gave up.

Like I've said many times now, I don't have any REAL interest in becoming a fiction author. I think it was Hugh Prather who wrote something to the effect that "if the desire to write is not accompanied by writing, then the desire is not to write." In my case, since the writing is not accompanied by a desire to write...there's probably a Shrödinger Box somewhere containing a really bizarre chicken and egg hybrid.

Nevertheless, for the next 30 days I will hold my own "Personal Novel Writing Month". Don't worry, I won't inflict any actual excerpts on the public—I've been far too nasty to far too many people to have the "Chigger Nuggets" for that!—but I may post observations on the process and experience.

Who knows...this could become the source of a new respect for all writers and the empathy needed to cut them some slack, regardless of how bad I find their work!

Nah. Let's not get carried away!