It's that time of year again...

There’s something about September. I can’t put my finger exactly on what it is, but something happens when the kids go back to school in August, the weather gets colder, the leaves start turning brown, and suddenly I find myself once again browsing the NaNoWriMo.org forums.

Even though I’ve said I probably wouldn’t do it again next year.

Even though I don’t have any idea for a story to write.

Even though I’ve been feeling really inspired to do more work on Behind the Scenes recently.

Or maybe because of the feeling of inspiration.

Whatever the reason, I think I’ll be taking part in NaNoWriMo again this year.

For those who are wondering what I’m babbling about (where have you been the last decade?!) NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, the intention of which is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. The idea is that everyone has a novel in them and this is your opportunity to get it out. December is for editing, November is all about quantity over quality.

I’ve taken part every year since 2005 with mixed degrees of success. I’ve had a few scraped wins, a couple of overachiever wins (where I’ve managed 100,000 words and in both cases I’m still yet to finish the story, I’m actually planning on rewriting it into a trilogy at some point), I’ve also had a couple of losses (the latest being last year due to inconveniently placed assignments and not enough planning of my story; the other being 2011 when I tried handwriting the damn thing, big mistake!)

Each time I’ve taken part I’ve had a good time, so it’s hardly any wonder that I’m coming back for more. What I love most of all is the sense of camaraderie online (and in person, I was once involved in a meet-up on my little island where people came over from Glasgow and Dunoon and we spent some time in the castle writing). It’s such a crazy challenge to embark upon that it’s nice to know you’re all in it together. I’ve also got lots of happy memories, particularly when my brother used to take part as well and we’d stay up until midnight at Halloween to begin, having word wars on MSN with people finding it hilarious that we were sitting in the same room but sending each other messages (such as requests to get the other a drink if they were leaving the room).

So now I’m plotting and planning and trying to work out what I’m going to do to get me to the total. I’m more or less decided about going with a story I started writing earlier in the year but stopped because I wasn’t really getting a feel for it. In the last few days of thinking it over I’ve changed the backstory of one of the characters and suddenly I’ve got a better idea of what will happen. Now I just need to work out what the end is supposed to be and how I can get the characters there.

In order to properly plan I need an inspiring notebook so Mr Click kindly treated me to one on Saturday. It’s the one with the purple labradors on. The one on top of it with the typewriters on has lovely colour pages which kind of remind me of my Wreck This Journal and I’m planning on using it for keeping track of things in my Behind the Scenes story, but I had to have it because it just screams NaNoWriMo.

Fingers crossed this year will see a return to old form and I’ll cross the 50k well before November 30th. If not, well, it doesn’t matter, it’s more about the journey than the destination anyway.