NaNoWriMo!

I love November. November means NaNoWriMo, and thus, it is my favorite month.

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Last November, I wrote the first 10,000 words of LIVVIE OWEN LIVED HERE on November 1. This year, it's November 4 and I expect to pass 10,000 today. I'm taking it a little slower, but enjoying it no less. Of course my students are NaNoing with me, which makes it twelve times more fun (since I have six of them this year and they each count twice).

My favorite part of NaNo isn't the community, although I love that. It isn't the sense of accomplishment, or even the finished book I've got at the end of the month.

No, my favorite part of NaNoWriMo is the NaNoisms -- the typos and senseless phrases that occur when you type entirely too many words in entirely too few days.

My favorite NaNoism from last year involved an evil Twinkie in somebody's eye. I have yet to top that yet this year, but I'm still enjoying myself. Here are a few of my NaNoisms so far this November:

"The red and green lights reflected on the water, but the reflection was broken and choppy like my prose."

"Without paper, I had to jot my notes on the back of a something wrapper."

"As soon as they were out of earshot, I heard them giggling."

This morning's NaNoism is simple. Brief. But no less painful.

"... one hot June day in August ..."

That reminds me of my very first "NaNoism," long before NaNo, when I was seven and writing about a girl named Tina Telanium who wore elbow and knee pads to ride her horse past all the wild panthers in her suburban West Virginia neighborhood. I wrote that Tina had "straight brown curls." If only I'd known what a NaNoism was back then so I could embrace it!

I love November!