On the Tail of One Competition Comes Another!

I told you yesterday about the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story contest coming up at the end of the month.  I forgot, until I got my email newsletter from WritersDigest.com, that coming just after the deadline for the contest is the beginning of NaNoWriMo.  For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is runs the entire month of November.  I had a friend/former coworker tell me about it late last year, and I thought this year I’d enter.  Thank goodness for the reminder in the newsletter or I probably wouldn’t’ve remembered.   So I hopped over to the website and signed up.  NaNoWriMo isn’t a writing contest – there is no monetary of publication prize at the end like the short story contest.  The prize for NaNoWriMo is (drum roll): the knowledge and satisfaction that you’ve written a novel-length story!  NaNoWriMo pushes you to write 50,000 words in the month (about the length of an average novel).  You can join regional groups which meet regularly to help other “wrimos” as they’re called on the website finish their stories.  Many of those groups are having “kickoff” parties toward the middle of this month and will have writing “parties” at various locations throughout the region during the month.  I’m set up on the website.  Now all I have to do is think of a topic and write.