PerNoFiMo

Yeah, I just wrote down PerNoFiMo, not NaNoWriMo. Because while I'm not officially participating in NaNo, I'm trying to embrace the spirit of it.

Last year I tried it, and I failed. I think part of it was that I decided a week before to do it, I didn't have an outline together, and this idea wasn't one that I could just spit out. I needed time to research and plan. So when it came time to write I hit a lot of brick walls and around 20,000 words I realized I would be using none of what I'd written. Plus, I spent a day driving home to California for Thanksgiving and a day driving back up to school. And once at home, I didn't want to write. I wanted to spend time with my friends, family, and cat.

Seriously, how could I write when I hadn't seen my kitty in 3 months?

I wasn't planning on doing NaNo this year. But then, a little idea I had began sprouting. And this one doesn't really need an outline or research, just a general idea and then I could run with it wherever I wanted. So tempting not to try again, except for a few things...

TESTS! STUDY! WORK! ESSAYS! CHORES! LIFE! MORE TESTS! MORE WORK! 

I'm sure you all know how it goes.

And, to top it all off, I'm still on a W.I.P right now that took a back seat when I came back to school.

I wanted to get in the spirit of NaNo though, and so what I decided was to have my own PerNoFiMo, or Personal Novel Finishing Month. This is going to be the month, guys. By November 30, I will have finished the first draft of my W.I.P. I'm currently at 45,000 words and hope to be anywhere between 65,000 and 75,000 by the time I finish. Anywhere between 20k-30k more to go.

Not quite (at all) 50,000 words, but it'll be a great accomplishment nonetheless.