National Novel Writing Month; or, NaNoWriMo Madness

Does anyone else do NaNoWriMo? For those who are super confused about what that jumble of letters are, it stands for National Novel Writing Month - an annual challenge to write 50k words in a single month! November is the month of choice, and it is a damn doozy getting it done. I've done it every year since 2009, and "won" (surpassed 50k) twice - the one year I failed was when I'd just started working full time and there was not a hope in hell I'd get there. I hate not having a perfect NaNo record, but it was definitely the best for my sanity at the time.

Anyhow. So, I will be participating this year again! And I'm actually really excited, because in all the years past I've been quite a pants-er about the process - pretty much November 1, I fish around my brain for the best idea in my head at the time, put my fingers to the keyboard, and go. And while I've managed to crank out 70k and 93k words for each of those successes, ultimately the stories have led nowhere and are subsequently shelved.

But! This year, I've actually got a plan! It was one of those ideas that hit me early in the year, and I was kinda like...hmmm. That actually sounds...good! But I don't know. But it's an idea that's stayed, that I just can't quite let go, and I find myself actually working out the details in my head and gathering storylines and characters for it. I'm taking it as a sign that it's an idea needed to be written, and NaNo seems like the perfect time to do just that.

Anyone else taking part in the madness? Has anyone done it before? Stories to tell about it? I've done a few meetups in San Diego, and once I accidentally stumbled into a meet up when I overheard people chatting about it at my local Coffee Bean where I usually write. This is the first year I'm going into it with a real story idea that could turn into something, and I'm pretty nervous!

I also bring this up because...what does this mean for the blog? If anyone did the math, getting to 50k words in a month means roughly 1667 words a day. For me, a naturally wordy person (as you can see by this post...and probably every review I've ever written...), it's not too hard - but those days that are tough? They're tough. It feels impossible some days when you're stuck. And throw in the holidays, and that for me personally I have a massive family reunion happening one of the weekends in November, and a huge YA event one of the days, and I'm still doing full time work...well. It's going to be a month of madness, and it becomes a question of what the hell do I do with this blog?!

Truthfully, I don't know what will happen. I'm working now to get things scheduled, especially since that'll lead up to December and I'm SUCH a holidays/Christmas freak that I want to do some fun things then. I'm doing my best to get quality content to go up and not have this fall to the wayside, but I wanted to give a small warning that things may be...quieter than normal. I have no problem devoting every free moment of my time to this blog 11 months of the year, but I am a writer still. And I'm going to allow myself 30 days to put writing before reading. I hope you understand.

T-minus 14 days until NaNo madness begins!
(Also, if you are doing NaNo, let's be a support system! I'm always happy to lend a supportive tweet or to check progress :) Accountability is half the battle!)