I am signed up for NaNoWriMo 08 - a challenge to write 50,000 words in one month, starting November. The graphic above is my attempt at a banner to summarise some themes from my project.

I only hesitated for a few days before joining, although I only started writing fiction "accidentally" about six months ago and have never written anything like that much in one month. I am hoping this is going to stretch me and my writing, help me commit to some writing (almost) every day, reawaken my creativity, that kind of thing. When I signed up, I had no idea what I would write. At the moment I have two different stories in my head and on my computer about a dystopian future after an ecological and social catastrophe. One of these is a lot more developed than the other, but neither is anywhere near finished even in first draft.

So far, I have written by accumulating scenes as they come to me, with the occasional set of background notes as I think out some issue in my made-up societies, so to look in these NaNoWriMo forums (I nearly typed "fora" but I guess that's way too pretentious) and see advice about outlining and knowing where your plot is going before you start is a whole new way of doing things. To write that much in that short a timespan, I think I am going to have to have more idea about where I am going on a daily basis.