For those of you who haven't heard (and what planet have you been on?) November of every year is National Novel Writing Month. Which nation exactly it is supposed to be is a mystery to me, as I know Americans and Austrians having a crack. I guess maybe NaNo sounds better than GloNo, which frankly makes me think of Rudolph, or perhaps some obscure disease causing a bit of your body you've forgotten you had to swell up and turn orange. It is also perhaps appropriate that the word Nano should appear. After all - 50,000 words, though a huge task in a month, is hardly an epic.

The whole thing is premised on that famous statement that everyone has a novel in them that is just waiting to be written. I've always found it quite amusing to imagine where we hide our novels. Do they sit taking up space in our brains, making it harder for us to think clearly until we finally get them out and then wonder how we ever managed before we got rid of the hulk of reconstituted wood cluttering the thinking space? Do they lie, heavy, on our stomachs, making us feel inferior and worthless till we slice them out through some form of intellectual liposuction (perhaps that's what having someone ghost write your autobiography is - a form of quick fix for the novel sitting inside?) or sweat them out by sheer physical effort? Do they perhaps sit in our feet, so that everywhere we go a little of where we tread rubs off on them, and as we journey through life they get heavier and heavier, weighing us down until we take them off like giant literary new rocks? Or are they maybe that tip of the tongue feeling - the half remembered I just had it in my hand a moment ago, where did I put it down?

At any rate, I've always suffered from the urge to take whatever thoughts I happen to be having and put them down on paper. At 14 I commenced a fantasy saga of epic proportions (working on the principle that in fantasy, it's quantity not quality, and the very worst kind of tripe will get published if it's packaged in some sorcery and over 1000 pages long - just look at Terry Goodkind!). It didn't get much further than a week's worth of fervent scribblings in a brand new notepad bought for the purpose, which, incidentally is still sitting under my desk at home, waiting to be finished.

Then there was the phase of dodgy poetry. The angst ridden children of a teenage mom, they skulk in corners looking moody, looking out from under their black emo-fringes and occasionally committing suicide with a great deal of fanfare by being ripped out of notepads and burnt or torn to shreds. I'm inclined to think we all have our fair share of poetic demons, but like most poems they'll stay firmly in my bottom drawer to be pulled out by me and only me when I'm old and wrinkly (or maybe not so old) to remember what it was like to be young and believe your love and your loss was the first and only real love and loss of history.

But back to the NaNoWriMo. The whole idea is motivated by a desire for quantity over quality. No-one need ever read your contribution, yet you can declare yourself a winner if you can just make it to 50,001 words by 23.59 on the 30th. Last year I failed to notice it was happening until midway through November, at which point I made some half hearted attempt to get involved and wrote all of about two sides.

I've managed a little more advance warning this year - I was reminded by the ever present LJ that it was but three days till the commencement of November, and consequently the best excuse I was likely to get all year to do less work than I strictly speaking should while still feeling productive. That belief, of course, turned out to be entirely false, as FerretBrain.com was spawned barely a week later, and gives me an opportunity to procrastinate procrastinating by writing about it!

So, what did I do with my two days of NaNo preparation? Well, I signed up to an LJ writer's support community, which I promptly left as around 500 other people decided to do exactly the same thing (unsurprising given its prominence in the LJ spotlight). I hooked myself up with an official account, and even a snazzy little progress counter. I signed up for daily motivational emails which (entirely falsely I might add) proclaimed that I was over the highest hurdle just by deciding to take part!

Then I began to ponder imponderables and attempted to do that hardest thing of all in any budding write'-s career - deciding what to write about. Unlike my enthusiasm for signing up to internet based assistance (conveniently remote and mechanical) my ability to commit to a storyline foundered. I thought about where I went wrong last year. I think I fundamentally lacked any desire to produce my magnum opus.

This year I feel a little different. My year away from it all has changed me - given me some new perspective on life. So now perhaps is a better time to write a book - I understand the world, and my place and function in it a little better. I might be able to finally put something worthwhile to paper. And, whether I win or not, I'll have a basis on which to build in the other 11 months - after all, who says that the NaNoWri has to end with the end of the Mo?

But that still doesn't answer the question- what to write?