I’m doing something a little crazy this November: balancing a full (or, in the opinion of my advisor, slightly overfull) course load, a job, religious observance, and being on a club eboard, and tacking on a writing challenge known as NaNoWriMo. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in a single month. The topic, style, and format can be whatever you want, and there are no judges or prizes. The options are succeed and come away with 50,000 words of a hot mess, or fail and come away with less than 50,000 words of a hot mess. A noble venture indeed.

With five hours left to go, I have yet to decide on a topic or plan of action, but I’m not alone. I have friends who are planning to just start writing at midnight and see what happens. Of course, I also have friends who have been planning all month. Those friends will most likely be crying on the floor within a week, when they realize just how far off they are from their overly-optimistic word goals. For us non-planners, the crying will come later in the month, when we realize that we totally forgot that 50,000 words is, like, a lot.

Best of luck to my fellow masochists in the coming month. It’s definitely going to go better than every other year we’ve tried this.