For Those About To Write

November is coming.

Two years ago I dedicated the month to growing a beard of epic proportions. This time around I'll be writing a novel of epic proportions.

That's right, NaNoWriMo. It's an annual challenge for would-be authors to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. And this year, I'm doing it. I am going to write 1,667 words per day, every day, for one month. And by the end I will have a fairly significant portion of a book.

I've already posted a few excerpts from the epic pseudo-fantasy story that I'm putting together. This is a project that I've been working on slowly for several years now, but I'm finally ready to do some serious writing. I've been using TiddlyWiki to keep notes on everything, following discussions on Writers.SE, and I've run lots of ideas past a few privileged friends. There are several more pages of unpublished excerpts lying around, and many more fragments floating around in my head. It's time to start merging everything into a solid storyline.

The working title of my novel is The Sword of the Sentinel. You've already met the main character:

Rael was just an ordinary young man from the borderlands who longed for an adventure. He never suspected when he fell in with a traveling band of traders that he would take his place among the Sentinels, the legendary guardians of the free lands. Now, with the threat of a terrible war looming, Rael finds himself in the midst of a desperate quest to unite the people of the world against the coming darkness.

You can follow along on my NaNoWriMo page as I race towards 50,000 words starting Tuesday, November 1.