November seems a good time to write a Novel

I wrote a blog post back in September about my failings of being able to write a book and perhaps writing a screenplay. Well since then it has moved on quite a bit but maybe not as originally planned.

I had planned out the story in full that I'd been thinking about for a few years now and found the actual starting to write a book quite daunting. I had started to write it as a screenplay but found it didn't seem easy either, and then for a few weeks did nothing with it. Probably waiting for a day in the future when I would find my notebook with all the planning in it and try and start again. But then I came across this website which every November runs a competition called National Novel Writing Month.

Every November 1st participants start writing with the goal of a 175 page (50,000 word) novel by midnight on November 30th. In 2008 they had over 120,000 participants and more than 20,000 of them made the deadline. So I've entered!

Now I'd said I found it difficult to start to write my story down as a book, well not now. As soon as I opened my Word document to start writing, I just started and it seems to be going well so far. I've got an amount of words to do a day but I try where possible to go over this amount as much as I can. Maybe it's because there is a deadline that it seems easier to write or maybe it was just time to get it all down - Who knows?!?

So anyway this story that I had all planned out, and I mean all planned out eg, characters, what happens in each chapter, has changed. Only a few of the things that I had planned are still relevant now as I continue writing a few days later. Strange really...maybe planning wasn't a good idea and then maybe it was? As I type it seems the story is pulling me into a new direction which is exciting as I have no idea where it's going. Maybe this is a good thing? We'll soon see.

I'm not saying that I'm writing a masterpiece, far from it. It'll probably not be very good but at least on November 30th I'll be able to say that I have written a novel and I will feel super proud of myself!

Is anyone else doing the competition? Or anyone else writing a book at the moment?