Impending Suicide of the Lazy Writer

I'm counting down the days 'til November 1st with a dose of both angst and excitement. For a few years now I've listened wistfully to participants' tales of glory and woe, and this year I'm determined to jump in and join the fray...

I'm going to do NaNoWriMo next month! (National Novel Writing Month), where you try to write 50,000 words in a month. If I take off on Sundays and Thanksgiving, that's somewhere around 2000 words a day. If I carve out the time, I don't think I'll have a problem writing that much, but this will definitely be a huge challenge. I'm not known for great story-finishing fortitude. Or story-starting fortitude, either. I love to write, but I haven't developed much discipline at all. I guess NaNoWriMo excites me because I won't be all alone...there is a goal and a sort of outward motivation to write. I won't be all dithered about subject, motives, time, and this, that, and the other thing. Once I'm in, I'm in.

In my conversations with God concerning NaNo, it was something like this:

"Alright, Lord, if I'm going to do this...if You really want me to commit to this (I really wanted to, but I wasn't sure if He would have me hide away from humanity to write for a month), I need You to give me:

1. A Laptop (which I had already been planning to get at some point, but would have to have if I'm going to be typing up 2000 words a day.)

2. Parental permission and support.

3. An Idea."

It may sound a little demanding of God, but after all, He is God, and I trust that He understood what I meant. I guess He did, because within a few weeks He'd abundantly provided all three. The idea (for a plot) was even kind of a bonus thrown in for good measure...I was willing to just take a leap of faith on that one. Oh, and that's another thing- showers are useful for something besides getting clean...the "Idea" popped right into my head in the solitude of my morning shower. It was so exciting that I layed awake at night thinking about it during the camping trip between starlit trips to the outhouse!

I won't say anything more about "The Idea" right now other than that it involves an eleven year old boy, a music box, and talking camels :) I figure that, right now, writing for kids is my best bet since I'm surrounded by plenty of raw inspiration (though I don't know about the camels...I haven't seen any of those recently!) I'm warning myself that this try at writing "in bulk" is only a practice round anyway.