tekchic

I competed last year and learned a lot about my writing. I also formed a wonderful habit of writing 1800 words a day (which I promptly kicked by mid-December — arrgh).  For those of you unfamiliar with the strange word, NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every year in November, both published and aspiring novelists alike will compete against themselves to see if they can produce 50,000 words in the month of November.

November is one of those difficult months with Thanksgiving, lots of work before holidays, and the onslaught of the Christmas season. We even visited the Grand Canyon by train last November! I brought my trusty little Acer Aspire One along for the ride (write?), and wrote while gazing at the landscape.

Going for it again this year, this time with a little more structure, a lot more outline and hopefully a great story arc that will keep me writing daily through and beyond 50,000 words.  My NaNoWriMo novel is tentatively titled “Time Jumpers” and is about a girl who figures out how to jump to a different point in time.  Here’s a synopsis:

Time Jumpers

At 16, rebellious teen Sammi has discovered the ability to jump through time — both backward and forward. When she is caught by the ruling society called The Utopics, she gets shipped off to a special school for TJ’s (Time Jumpers). Sammi and her classmates become trained to either jump backwards to assassinate historical targets such as Hitler and Mussolini, or scout future events by jumping ahead.

A rogue group of jumpers is trying to change what The Utopics are doing, believing that society should learn from the mistakes of history rather than trying to eliminate them to create perfection. Does Sammi choose to perfect history the way she was trained? Or does she decide to alter the course of history in a different way?

Have you decided to do NaNo too? You can be my “Writing Buddy” at: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/410845 or just stealthily eyeball my word count as November marches on.