Lighting a Literary Spark Under Your Derrières

I have always wanted to write a novel. In college, I even bought myself a greeting card that read, "You are fabulous! One day you will write a novel!" (Totes pathetic?) Well, I did crank out a 100-page novella senior year, but since then the only fiction I've written is a bunch of love letters that my ex unceremoniously sent back to me in a shoe box (to my office, on his company's dime, but that's neither here nor there.) The point of all this is rambling is that I've found something wonderful: It turns out November is National Novel Writing Month, and there is a whole web-site dedicated to getting you, YES YOU, to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight on November 30th. Sign up at NaNoWriMo, and take the next week to brainstorm some loose ideas. Then, log in regularly to update your word-count. I did the math (amazing, I know) and 50,000 words is about 175 pages, which breaks down to 5.83(repeating) pages per day. You can totes do that! I know I'm gonna....