I just signed up on NaNoWriMo this morning of November 1, 2009. I have heard about this National Novel Writing Month before. I have never taken an interest in this thing where you have to write a novel within one month. Just thinking about what I think is a very daunting task turns me off. Like who has the time to do that?

Well, I know that there are many people who participate in this, but probably not a very busy working mom like me. But then again, I have always wanted to write a book. Well, probably not always, but about six years ago, I started fantasizing about writing a book, a memoir. And so I thought, if I take on this challenge now, I could finally realize that fantasy. I know, it sounds like an ambitious dream. But I did say fantasize, didn’t I?

I haven’t even been thinking about this NaNoWriMo. I received an email with a link, or did I come across something on a website? I can’t remember now. Just this morning of November 1, 2009. And today is the first day to start writing. So this is probably a sign from up there, or anywhere, I don’t know where exactly. At first, I thought that I’d just take on this challenge upon myself. I’ll write my memoir in a month. I won’t sign up, because NaNoWriMo wants fiction. And I’m not really into writing fiction.

But I thought I’d just check out the website. So I clicked on the About page. It says there that you have to write a novel of 50,000 words by midnight of November 30, 2009. The quality doesn’t matter. You can revise later. What matters now is the quantity. Okay, so I thought, maybe I can pull this off. I’d turn my story into a novel. I can write about myself in the third person. Or in the first person. I’ve read novels that are written in the first person. I’d just make a few things up, and also change my family members and friends and people I interact with into fictional characters, maybe combine two people in one character and I can make them do things the way I wanted them to. Ha ha. That would be fun. Then I’d actually be writing a novel, right?

Now that I’ve written about it here, maybe it will motivate me to stick with it. I’m already excited. I was telling my 11-year old son about it this morning. I asked him if he thinks I can do it, he said, “I don’t think so, mommy.” And I was like, “I’ll prove to you that I can.” And when I kept going on about it at lunch, he said, “You talk too much mommy.” I said, “So you see, if I just put into writing what I talk about, I think I could do it. After all, that’s only 1,667 words a day.” I think that’s how I should approach it. And maybe in a month’s time, I’d actually have written a draft of a novel. Or a draft of my memoir, which wouldn’t qualify as a novel, but that’s fine. That’s what I want to do in the first place, anyway. Or maybe this will just be one more thing that I started and didn’t finish. We’ll see.