To do or not to do… again? National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) starts November 1 and I’m debating whether to give it another try. This would be try number 5 or 6, I lost count. I know I did not try it last year.

NaNoWriMo runs every November and the goal is to draft a 50,000 word novel during the month. I say draft because there is no way you can write and edit a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It’s hard enough to write the 1600 or so words each day plus maintain a day job or mange a household or whatever us non-professional writers do to pay our bills.

Every year I’ve gone into it with an idea and sometimes even a half-ass plot outline of chapters but every year I get about 5000-8000 words into it and stop. Stuff comes up, life interferes etc. I have many a self-help book with titles like – “How to write a novel in 30 days” or ” How to succeed at NaNoWriMo“. I certainly want to accomplish this, it’s on my bucket list. But its hard.

This year though I have a possible way to succeed. Write my memoirs. Write my life story. No one said your novel had to be a best seller. There are no rules regarding whether it be fictional or non-fictional or autobiographical. It just has to be 50,000 words long and readable, meaning no nonsensical crap, coherent sentence are a must. So I think this may work. I’ve been outlining my life on my Facebook account all this month with daily postings about bit and pieces of my life (see this posting – Started my 60th orbit around the Sun). I even have a name for my novel – Army Brat for Life.

So, to do or not to do? I think to do. I’m finding it very limiting when writing short post about my life. I want to expound on certain things but limited by normal posting on Facebook. Already I’m pushing the word limits of a post. So putting all this down in a book would fulfill a bucket list item and also leave something for my children to know about me. I have tons of pictures to go with the stories. This is something I wish my Dad had done. I never knew much about his childhood, his time at West Point or his time in Viet Nam or even what his favorite color was. Anyone who knew has passed on as well.

So yeah, let’s do this.