Get Scrappy.

So, next month is NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. There's a well known online organization that gets people to participate and become novelists. I've made several stabs in the past, but this year is going to be my year.

So, what exactly does that mean? 50,000 words in 30 days. Or, 1,667 words a day. To put that into perspective, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (46,333), The Giver (43,617), and Fahrenheit 451 (46,118) all had a lesser word count. Also factor in that Thanksgiving counts as one of those days. So if you don't want to write then, you're going to have to double up somewhere else. Also, (because I'm insane like this), I fully plan on continuing to blog in November, as well. 

It's not easy. The best advice I have ever received when it came to writing came from none other than Patrick Rothfuss (author of The Name of the Wind). I asked him what his best advice for completing NaNoWriMo and he told me "Sit your ass in a chair and write. That's really it." Or, as Ernest Hemingway put it: "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed."

Honestly, that's exactly what writing truly means. There's a whole hell of a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that goes into writing something. As Frank Herbert put it: "Fear is a mind killer" and  there is a lot of that that happens as you put words to page. "Is this crap?" is something I ask myself with each blog post, poem, short story, etc. In fact, with my blog (and my poetry), I hit "submit" before reading it. That prevents me from butchering it or allowing it to get to my head. In fact, I rarely ever read my own posts. So, the fact that I'm dedicating a month of my life and creating a piece of work that I hope and pray will hit bookstores some day is daunting, to say the very least. I'm facing very real adversaries; both external (time and extenuating circumstances) and internal (doubt and distraction). 

I'm scrappy. Which is a very nice way of saying I'm stubborn and hate to give up.  When I'm truly dedicated to a project, nothing else matters. I pour every ounce of my being into what I am creating. And this particular project is one that I have made multiple attempts at. Which makes me all the more determined. So, by hell or by high water, I'm writing a book.