write fiction

I have heard about this and it has always caught my attention. This November is National Novel Writing Month (abbreviated NaNoWriMo) The “What is” page showed me how this is an exercise in developing my voice as an author, it gives me permission to make mistakes, to “build without tearing down.”

I added a new goal called “Finish NaNoWriMo” – this means that I am going to write a 50,000 word piece of fiction over 30 days (including Thanksgiving!). You can follow my progress at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/532428

Last spring and summer I would take my lunch break in downtown Lansing (a few steps away from my cube farm in the government). I usually went to either Beaners (now known as Bigby Coffee) or Decker’s Coffee and wrote out a few passages.

My problem was finishing things. I had a few good ideas but I could never seem to tie them together in a satisfactory way. Almost all the fiction I’ve ever written is in spiral notebooks, unread by anybody.

This summer I’ll have an ample amount of time to work on prose. I don’t want it to simply collect dust, though. It would be nice to at least transfer some to the computer. There is much more to be said about this goal.