In case there was any doubt…

…yes, I may be officially crazy.

Because, in addition to my commitments at school, work, and home, I seem to have helped craft a new writing project idea for November.  You may have heard of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.  The idea behind this is kind of crazy, kind of compelling: write a novel-length piece of prose in the 30 days of November.  Conceptually, I can see how this might get me past my, “I want to write a novel-length piece of prose, but what if it’s crap?” problem.  Because the idea isn’t to write a good novel, just something that is that long.  Once convinced of your idea that yes, you can string that many words together about one story, perhaps then you can get out of your own way and proceed crafting something of a decent quality.

It may work, it may not – but I do have one friend who turned the concept into a book contract.  There are probably others.

But procrastinating about writing is more than a common occurrence – it’s a cliche.  So many of us who like to write, like stories, like to read, and want to tell our own stories end up putting it off indefinitely.  Thus it is so that I have about a zillion pieces of ideas around a novel-length piece of prose and have only committed a few of them to pixels.  The rest of those ideas keep rolling around in my head like laundry on an endless tumble-dry, going nowhere.  Perhaps shrinking.  Perhaps I’m letting this metaphor get out of hand.

Enter an idea that sort of bounced around among Rana of Frogs and Ravens, Amanda of Household Opera, and me: NoNaShoStoWriMo, or Not-National Short Story Writing Month.  Instead of committing to a 50,000 words in the next month, we’re shooting for the more modest, achievable goal of about 7,500 words.  I’ve decided to use the ideas/concepts that have been doing the tumbling and spinning and see where I get with it – perhaps that will get me enough of a start so I can use it as a springboard to an actual long-format work.

Anyone with us?

ETA:

And yes, the name does sound like something in Judoon, for all you Doctor Who fans…