November is
National Novel Writing Month. Your objective, should you choose to participate, is to
infiltrate the enemy base write a full novel, at least 175-pages long (or 50,000 words) starting November 1 and ending at Midnight, Nov. 30. If you manage to do it, your name gets put on the list of "winners" at the website, you pat yourself on the back and treat yourself to a cookie. Yay.
It seems sort of fun to try, just to see if you can do it. Of course, you can do it any month, but will you ever really without signing up to some event to make you feel guilty whenever you remember it during your usual lazy-time?
Maybe I can manage a short story in November? Or maybe that's even harder than writing a novel, i.e. "I didn't have time to write a short story, so I wrote a long one instead"?
By the way, according to my google search, that 'short letter' quote, sometimes varying slightly in its wording, is most often attributed to Mark Twain, but also sometimes to Blaise Pascal. A similar quote ("I'm sorry to have written such a long letter, but I didn't have time for a short one.") is attributed to George Bernard Shaw, and to Rudyard Kipling. One site says that the quote "may go back as far as Cicero". So Mr. Sam Clemens, stop taking all the credit for being witty.
Another writing advice from Mark Twain (or is it?): "Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." Hmm. That's damn good advice.
