The Month for Cheating On My Blog

I am as big a fan of the library as anyone with a reading problem could possibly be. And by the way, by my reading problem, i mean an unrelenting desire to read as many books as i possibly can in this lifetime (a very positive problem i think! i even used to keep a list one time of what i read one year and underrated myself to silver star when compared to the list the year before)
When you have a wonderful problem like this, and you dont necessarily know where your permanent home is going to be (the problems of a globally nomadic generation seeking opportunities and adventure sometimes really far away from home shores)-buying books can be a tad impractical. Buying an iPad or a Kindle may solve the problem, one may say-but that bug has just not caught on with me(yet). I want my honest-to-goodness, smell-the-paper-and-watch-it-yellow experience of being curled up in bed with a real book. I like to put in bookmarks (sometimes improvised to include my phone, a hairband, a credit card bill), i love the feel of a well-bound hardcover-the sense of touch really makes the stories seem more real somehow.
So anyway, the whole point of the above is that i would not know what i'd do if the city i live in didnt have such a fabulous library system(thank you King County tax payers for supporting the libraries with your tax dollars!)
Last month, while placing holds for books online, i came across a small promotion box on the library site. It simply said " November is National Novel Writing Month" and redirected to www.nanowrimo.org.
A little voice is my head suddenly found itself after ages. A tiny little dream shook itself from its long snooze and opened its eyes wide. I remembered all over again my oft-dreamt dream of writing a book. A dream i never took seriously because i could never find enough inspiration (and the time)to sustain an entire book project.
But this campaign was so simple (and therefore not intimidating!) All it says is: write 1667 words every day for 30 days this month, immerse youself in 30 days and nights of literary abandon! How poetic! Of course what you'll write will seem cheesy at first, they say-but just get it out there, write out the words, dont worry about the quality, and something beautiful will emerge. If nothing, you'd have accomplished a body of work you call your own. And all it takes is baby steps every day. There are even NaNo stats that track for you your word rate, your current pace, whether you're ahead or behind schedule, the works. (my favorite resources are the pep talks from other published authors who'd started out with NaNoWriMo) If you write a validated novel of 50 thousand words at the end of the month, you get to be a winner. Last year, 165000 people participated, of which 30000 were winners 'entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever' -as per the website.
So i decided-i'll do this thing, i'll take the plunge. If only for my own reading pleasure (or displeasure) at the end of the month, but i would attempt to create a novel. A partner marketing manager by day, a writer by night. How wickedly good is this-the deliciousness of a dual life!! Silly jokes aside, this will be my little escape from the mundane. I have a meandering tale in mind, and it's cooking up on its own for now, directionless it seems but hopeful of finding an essence, a meaning. My plot is lame, my flow feels wrong, and yet- i feel right! I feel good and energized just to be taking this journey. Who knows, it may give me courage someday to write something i'd be proud of.
So this month, dear blog: i will be cheating on you. I'll be working away on my words per day and my imagination is running low. So this month, my posts will be some of my old work (which incidentally you cannot repurpose for the novel)- some short stories i wrote eons ago, almost from a different life it seems.(or at the least from a different decade)
I'll be back next month, a winner or not-but definitely the richer for it. Here's to words, all fifty thousand of them!