NaNoWriMo

Rita Jeptoo is a Kenyan marathon runner who won the 2006 Boston Marathon, with a time of 2:23:38 hours. She came back to win the 2013 Boston Marathon in a time of 2:26:25, and the 2013 Chicago Marathon in a time of 2:19:57, which is her current personal best.

Among the world’s marathoners, Jeptoo is the woman to beat.

I ran a marathon two weeks before I turned forty with a time of 5:12:22 and I was ecstatic with my time.  I finished, and that was my goal.

They say that many people have running a marathon on the “bucket list” as it is the challenge of note that a normal person can give their body. 

They also say that many people have "write a novel" on their bucket list.  Is it true for you?  In every person I have ever met is a book waiting to be written. 

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in the USA.  Since it was Founded by Chris Baty in San Francisco, NaNoWriMo now has participants on every continent – even  Antarctica. 

Technically it's now International Novel Writing Month, but the original name has stuck.  The way it gets done has become a phenomenon – online.

Because the internet has become such a “big brother” (pun intended) that we all share, the networking has become phenomenal.  Strategies for “getting it down” are shared and bounced around between writers and aspiring novelists all over the world. 

Last year during NaNoWriMo I started blogging while I wrote my YA novel, euphobia.  Blogging and writing a novel at the same time is INCREDIBLY challenging and my trip to my blogsite became a weekly excursion, rather than a daily one.  This year is no different.  I am in the middle of my next work (I’ll introduce you tomorrow) and I am officially making an invitation to do the same. 

HERE ARE SOME GUIDELINES if you want to join in!!

·         Participants register for free at www.nanowrimo.org to log their progress and share anxiety levels in the forums. Last year over three hundred thousand people took the challenge. This year 500,000 are expected to sign up.

·         a novel is officially 50,000 words, but some (like me) say that’s a baby novel, or “novella” (Stephen King wrote “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” as a novella).  Still, 50,000 words is a hulluva start on a rough draft.   NaNoWriMo’s website says a novel as "a lengthy work of fiction.”   Get started and get going.

Want to know the BEST thing about running a marathon?  It was meeting runners.  Runners are a special breed of people who think that everyone can run and there’s no such thing as “good” – there are only the people who do it.

Writing is the same.  We all have a book deep inside of us – if we had the time to write….

Just do it. 

Mario greets me at the finish line of our marathon
(He finished with a time of 4:18:49)