I love NaNoWriMo.

I started my first one on November 4, 2007 and did not come close to finishing with just over 13,000 words, but I knew, as I put in that final word count, that I was hooked.

Almost four years later, after crossing the WriMo finish line not once but three times since, I’m still just as enthused as ever. I’ve approached the midnight hours of October 31 each year on a sugar high (what you think I won’t steal candy from my children? Bah!) filled with dread…but it’s the adrenalin pumped dread that only precedes the 30 Days and Nights of Literary Abandon! Even though I’ve started, now, as many times without an outline as I have with one and most times I don’t know the first word I’ll write until it’s on the page…

When November 1 gets here, I get excited.

I get excited to see where my imagination will take me. I get excited to find the story. I get excited to actually create something!

Of course, by the time it’s over, I’m just relieved I made it. I don’t even look at the M(e)ss I’ve written until after Christmas, most times. By then, the excitement is replaced with a new feeling of dread – that of trying to shape the M(e)ss into something coherant. I’ve got a 50/50 success rate going so far. If you count a half finished novel that is, nevertheless, impeccably edited. (Back then my Inner Editor sat on my shoulder from the start, so I never actually finished anything.)

But that’s a musing for another day! Today is NaNoWriMo Day 1, and the possibilities and excitement are limitless!

Are you a WriMo’er? Do you get excited to do it, too? Are you shopping a finished NaNoWriMo novel for publication? Has it helped your writing to participate? Tell me your NaNo History in the comments.