NaNoWriMo begins in just 17 days. Not sure of what NaNoWriMo is? Well, it stands for “National Novel Writing Month.” But NaNoWriMo is more than just the title for November…it’s also an event. Hundreds of thousands of writers sign up at NaNoWriMo.org to write a novel in just 30 days. Well, write 50,000 words of a novel. Most novels ought to be longer than that, if you want to be published. (See “Length” in “The Difference between Novels and Short Fiction,” here.)

There are some NaNoWriMo rules, like not working on a work-in-progress. Obviously I have a work in progress, even if it isn’t currently progressing (see word count, right column). But, I’m sort of going to use NaNoWriMo to motivate my writing anyway. Besides, all I’ve really written so far is the prologue, and how many people skip over that, anyway?

So I am spending the next 17 days doing an unhealthy amount of research, outlining, planning, plotting, and taking notes so that by the time November 1st hits, I’ll be ready to write with “literary abandon!”

Will you be participating in NaNoWriMo this year? What do you want to know about writing a novel? Ask your questions in the comments, tweet me anytime, or comment on my Facebook page. That’s right—I just added a link to Facebook so I can connect with you lovely people in another arena. For links to my Twitter, Facebook Page, and RSS feed, check out the icons in the top of the right column.

P.S. I’m mostly kidding about that research link. I have far more reliable resources than the kind editors at Wikipedia. If anybody is interested, I’ll post reviews on some of the more general sources I’ll be using. I assume you aren’t all writing about 12th century England, so I’ll leave the specific ones to myself.

P.P.S. Please, don’t write about 12th century England.