NaNoWriMo a-go-go!

This year I have decided, for the first time, to participate in NaNoWriMo. For anyone that’s not familiar with this event, you can look here: nanowrimo.org

This decision was partly motivated by the fact that I don’t have any freelance work at the moment, partly by the desire to do more writing, and partly by the need to “cleanse my palette”… so to speak. I figure that a writing sprint like this, on a totally new project, will help clear out all the cobwebs that accumulate as I cycle through my stories making edits and tweaking scenes.

I’m also writing in the sci-fi genre instead of the fantasy genre for this. I have done a little bit with sci-fi, but I’ve always enjoyed writing fantasy more, so that’s what the lion’s share of my work is. This will let me flex my space muscles a little bit and expand my portfolio.

I must say, it’s now the 10th of November and the event has been challenging. I think I’m standing at nearly 17k words. It’s both frustrating and very gratifying to work on this project. I’ve got the ever-so-familiar “this writing is crap, how can I have believed I could do this” doubts, but I’m pushing through them.

My main motivation for this story is to write something my son will want to read. Usually he turns down my stories because he doesn’t like “those kinds of books”. This time I asked him what I should write about. He said “space monkeys” and I said “wha?”. So I’m writing a story about space. The “monkeys” are a little… metaphorical… but there you have it. Hopefully he’ll enjoy reading it as much as I am enjoying writing it.