Today marks the first day of NaNoWriMo. Though I completed my 50,000 word task last year, I did not produce a novel worthy of publishing. However, it was not a wasted effort as I have recently stumbled on a plan for rescuing parts of it and reworking the story. The most important thing about last year was that I proved to myself I could write a book.

This year’s project has a similar theme to last when I attempted to write a fictional account of the last few years of my life. Today I will begin the actual account. I thought the distance of fiction would make it easier to write. It didn’t. And the story is begging to be told whether anyone ever reads it or not.

The goal at NaNoWriMo is to write for 30 days and reach a goal of 50,000 words. That is a very short novel. To achieve this one’s daily word output needs to meet or exceed about 1667 words. Sounds daunting but it is really quite doable. It’s only six and a half pages at 250 words a page.

In order to organize myself and stay on top of the page/word count, and propel myself from my arbitrary start point to finish, I am using a few books to help prompt me. One is Emma Mae Robbins Your Way: A Guide to Writing Your Own Life Story and the other was suggested to me by a fellow writer, Cindy La Ferle, Thinking About Memoir by Abigail Thomas. I have spent time reading and incorporating their ideas into a kind of outline prompter. I don’t know if it will work. I plan to supplement the story with old blog pieces from my first year of widowhood and even posts from the message board I belonged to during my late husband’s illness. In addition there are the hundreds (over 500 I think) emails that Rob and I exchanged and our IM sessions.* I have a story to tell and it has substance to spare.

I did not plan on beginning this journey on a 30 hour road trip home from my dad’s funeral. An interesting twist of events that will no doubt influence the outcome.

I will blog throughout the month. Probably not daily, so if you haven’t got me on a reader yet – now would be a great time to do that (and I hate readers really because I lose site views and I really love to know that people have been here).

Wish me luck.