Kissing books goodbye - for now

Last night I was able to finish A.S. King's The Dust of 100 Dogs, and the timing couldn't have been better (the ending was fabulous, by the way). The author and I have been chatty over private messages in the Backspace forum. I have to admit I've been interacting with authors often in the past year. I've emailed with them, rubbed elbows with them at conferences, and followed their blogs like a lost puppy. And I get this sort of excited 12-year-old girl inside of me screaming when I get emails/messages/etc. from authors I admire.

Such as A.S. King.

She might check back to see this blog, which would be great. But I guess this kind of puts me out there like a seventh grader who has a crush on a classmate, athough this crush is purely professional.

In any case, her book might be the last one I read for a while as I've signed up to challenge myself with a writing marathon this month - 50,000 words of my next book. April 1 to April 30.

Deep breath.

A.S. King herself is joining in on the fun as the marathon is sponsored by the fantastic writing group we're both members of, Backspace.

I succeeded at a similar marathon in November, which is National Novel Writing Month. Nanowrimo is an international phenomenon in which writers spend thirty days writing 50,000 words. I met that goal and haven't opened the Microsoft file containing my 50K since. I'm not sure I'll be able to do much with it. Nanowrimo 2008 taught me a few things.

1. I can write every day, producing lots of words.

2. Without preparation (for me a detailed outline) before I begin, the result is nearly useless.

So this time around, I'm hitting the keyboard with an outline beside me. I've already written about my characters before, in The Diner on Third, and I'm hoping that's a bonus. In any case, I'm going to be spending more time this month writing than reading.

If you're up for a challenge, another contest to consider this month is ScriptFrenzy. This is a Nanowrimo-ish contest for scriptwriters. This isn't an April Fool's Day joke. The good thing about writing is if you want to write, you can write. It's up to you to do it. Maybe I should turn that finger around and feed myself that advice.

It's Day One of the marathon. Time to get writing.