NaNoWriMo 2009

Hi - To anyone who might still be reading my blog (I realize it's not the most exciting thing in the world)

I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year again, thanks to my wonderful husband who insists it is a good thing for me. (I agree, it makes me very excited just thinking of it!) Although we're not allowed to start writing the novel until Nov. 1st, I'm starting to think of ideas of what I might write about this time. More on that later ...

I'm also looking for friends to take the challenge with me. The point of NaNo is for anyone who's thought they would like to write a novel to actually sit down and do it. You don't worry about editing or producing a perfectly polished product in just a month, you just get a good jump on your novel. Last Nov I wrote about 55,000 words on Lacy's Choice. In comparison, the other novel I'm working on, Emmaline, I've only just reached 30,000, and I started it months before NaNo last year. Now, Lacy's Choice as a final product, which I'm starting to submit to publishers, got the first 25,000 words chopped off the front and ended up just under 90,000 words. That's just to give you a picture of how rough your NaNo draft will be. But it's OKAY! That's the point! Without NaNo last year, Lacy's Choice wouldn't exist, and I might be around 50,000 words on Emmaline (still a long way away from finishing - even considering I could have spent more time with it if I hadn't done NaNo)!

I'm open to opinions on what I should write this year (and I'm assuming no random person is going to find my blog and steal my ideas), so here are my two options:

1. For those of you who edited Lacy's Choice for me, My Dear Joe is the story of Joe and Becky. Joe and Becky dated their freshman year at BYU, then Joe went on his mission. He came home and proposed to Becky, and she informed him she was going on a mission, too. Now Becky's coming home, and this book is all about how they deal with getting to know each other again (they've been apart for nearly 4 years!), breaking up, getting back together, dating other people, and eventually ... well, you get the picture.

2. Monterrey Jack - On an entirely different note and different genre, Jack is a 10 yr old boy who lives in Monterrey, CA (the one place I'd live if I had more money than I knew what to do with). His dad leaves him and his mom, and his mom sells the only thing she has of worth, an heirloom necklace, to buy a car so she can get to work and support herself and Jack. Jack, determined to get the necklace back for her, talks the owner/captain of a squid boat into hiring him on. I'll stop before I give away the ending.

So, leave me some comments on what story you think I should write, and let me know if you're up for a challenge this November. It's completely do-able, and it's so much fun! Come on!