I am one very satisfied Nerdfighter. Yeah, you guessed it – I just finished my Maths homework, and am now free to procrastinate online and… I mean, plan my NaNoWriMo novel. Oops. Right there, is evidence of procrastination at work.

So, NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. For those who, by some terrible twist of fate, don’t know what it is, the nutshell version is that it involves writing 50,000 words of a novel. In the month of November. For a much better and more exciting explanation, visit www.nanowrimo.org.

So… are you doing NaNoWriMo? The answer had better be yes – and if not, quickly haul ass over to the aforementioned site and get yourself an account. You don’t have long – it’s roughly five hours until the start in Australia! If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, let me know in the comments, and add me as a writing buddy on the now rather over-plugged site above. Here’s my profile for the lazy ones who can’t be bothered to do a bit of stalking…

If you’re not doing NaNoWriMo, then why in the name of all things llama not? Leave me your (pitiful) excuses in the comments.

Now, this being my first year of insanity, I don’t have much license to bully people into writing for a month. But I’m going to do so anyway. I don’t see any reason not to do NaNoWriMo. You don’t have to be able to write, you just have to have a story to tell. You don’t have to have time – even a small portion of the 50,000 word goal is part of a novel that you wouldn’t have otherwise. If you can’t justify writing 50,000 words of rushed crap, think again. To paraphrase John Green, no first draft of a novel is good. But by doing NaNoWriMo, at least you’ll have a draft. If you really can’t find it in you to take it further, then you’ve had the experience (and accompanying bragging rights) of writing a book in a month. And if you do take it further, then who knows? You could be a published novelist one day.

In the words of Kristina Horner (or rather, her song, aptly titled ‘The NaNoWriMo Song’), “a lot of people want to write a book.” Are you one of them? If the answer was yes, or even maybe, then go and sign up for NaNoWriMo.

Given that I’ve been procrastinating over the several hours its taken to write this blog (YouTube is a massive distraction, let me tell you!), my ability to form a decent argument as to why you should be writing a novel this November is pretty crap. If you’re still not convinced, click here, here or here.

Now, for those awesome people who are doing NaNoWriMo – tell me, are you a planner, or a pantser. Do you have a detailed plot/character sketches/any sort of plan before November, or do you find yourself, like me, less than four hours before the grand opening with only the vaguest idea of a single character? I’m a pantser, obviously, and I’m all ready to write with no preparation in the way of plot… In short, I’m set on a steady course for failure. Will I be able to write 50,000 words from my nothing-plan? All will be revealed, next week on… Haha, at the end of November.

I’m going to wrap this up now, because clearly, I’m not with it enough right now to blog coherently. But before I go – here is my offer to you (yes, you, reading this!) during the month of November. I’m opening my comments to anything and everything NaNoWriMo, whether what I’m posting has anything to do with it or not. You can complain, gloat, tease and ramble about your noveling and word count in my comments, and tease me about my pitiful word count.

Less than four hours to go, no plot, one character, 0 words. Bring it on, NaNoWriMo!