Ahoy! NaNoWriMo Approaches!

(Picture from The Booksmith)

What does Water for Elephants, The Night Circus (pictured above), and dozens of other books all have in common? They had their humble origins as rough copies from NaNoWriMo.

This Saturday, October first, marks the date where the NaNoWriMo website reboots itself, letting members new and old alike come in and set up their pages before the fun, challenging, totally off-the-wall awesome event that is National Novel Writing Month.

If you have never heard of it, National Novel Writing Month is an event spanning all 31 days of November where a participant writes a 50,000 word novel (or rather, novella, but it is generally agreed in NaNoWriMo that "novel" is a cooler word.) That breaks down to around 1667 words a day to make the deadline, unless you are like me and blow through 10,000 in the final weekend.

I'm writing about it for two reasons:
1) I first learned of it a few years (four, to be precise) ago on a blog, and am now using my blogging abilities to spread the word further
2) The book bloggosphere has been up in arms with love for The Night Circus recently, and today it was revealed to me that not only has it hit the New York Times bestseller list, but it started when Erin Morgenstern decided to sit down and takes the challenge that thousands of other people just like you take every November

Needless to say, it isn't easy. But then again, most of the worthwhile things in life ever are. And you only need one thing to start: that tiny spark in the back of your mind that says "Yes, I can do this."