It’s that time of year again. The air is getting crisper, the temperature is dropping, and it’s still early enough in the month that you don’t hate yourself for attemping NaNoWriMo again. You will though, we all do it. About 12 days in and you’ll begin thinking to yourself “Why did I do this to myself again? Didn’t I learn from last years, or the year before that, or the one before that?”, but you never really learn. And for those of you who haven’t had the joy of self-loathing and word counting, there’s always room for newcomers.

If you want to hear the thoughts on NaNoWriMo from its creator, Chris Baty, we’ve got an interview with him from two years ago. Some of the info is a little dated now, but a lot of it still holds true.

What is NaNoWriMo and why is it capitalized all funny? It stands for National Novel Writing Month and the objective is 50,000 words in 30 days. It sounds easy enough, until you start writing and contending with daily life to get your word count. Everyone has a horror story they can tell you about NaNoWriMo. My favorite is the year my laptop almost electrocuted me. However, you keep writing, in the hopes of hitting that 50k mark.

What do you win? Not a darn thing except pride, a heavy caffeine addiction, and a little icon to put on your site, LiveJournal, or whatever you have. Still it’s all in good fun, and you may even turn out something that you can polish into a best seller.

Remember, you’re not alone on your writing adventure. Millions of people all over the world are working on their novels as well, including much of the Way of the Geek staff. So you’re not suffering, or celebrating, alone.

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2. Happy 2010!
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