NaNoWriMo!

That's National Novel Writing Month to you commoners. I found about this by chance, reading through an article on the event in my writing magazine. Essentially it's a world-wide event, that has been running for several years, where all the participants aim to write (and upload onto the NaNoWriMo website) 2000 words a day, each day for the whole month of November. This gives an average (short) novel of about 50,000 words (first draft only, of course).

As soon as I found out what it was I decided to join, and soon after signed up and had my beginnings of a plot sorted out. It's a great program - where you can join up even without a story idea in play. The website plays host to a massive forum with many sub-threads, all designed to help one another get to the point of starting a novel (and throughout the process too!). There are sub-forums for all the main genres, character forums, adopt-a-plot forums where you submit a plot that you just can't do justice to and other people can take it on if they so choose - it's all excellent stuff.

Anyway, I've had an idea for a group of characters buzzing around my head for a few weeks and couldn't find a place to fit them in. Now, however, thanks to the wonders of the NaNoWriMo website, I've a loose plot outline (at least the beginning). I have only got facts on the beginning because, in all honesty, I don't know how it'll end. I intend to do as alot of authors claim to have done for this event and write by the seat of my pants. Of course I've already got some planned out, so I'll be doing that only from a certain point, but it should allow me enough time to get to know my characters and let them react through my writing and make the rest of the novel feel natural and flow well.

I guess my point for joining up is to connect with other writers outside of the Black Library/Games Workshop influence and expand my horizons a bit. Another very good reason is it provides alot of community support, help and encouragement to keep me writing each day and aim to finish the story. Getting a full novel finished, even as far as a first draft, will be a major achievement for me, and give me something to polish and hopefully submit to a willing editor/publisher. Here's hoping!