I have been wanting to write a novel for a while now.

I've had the whole story in my head since before I started working here at The Mercury. But I've built it up so ambitiously at this point, that I feel I need a year in the wilderness, living off wild berries and rain water, to work it all out. But a homey's got bills to pay (and stacks of records to keep buying. It's a vicious and endless circle).

That's why NANOWRIMO was started in 1999. And no, nanowrimo is not a palm-size super blender made in Japan, though it sounds like it could be. It stands for NAtional NOvel WRiting MOnth. Catchy, ain't it? And that month is about to dawn come November 1.

A pal of mine has conned me into giving up the next month of my life to take up this mammoth challenge headfirst. (My goal is to be less the writer I was in college, where I would spew out 50 pages of word trash in the last 12 hours before deadline.)

And now I'm spreading the disease. If you got a story in you, the only way it may ever get out is if you just binge and purge it all right now. If you need to take it seriously, you can edit and cut and add and edit some more and ship off to a publisher afterwards. But for now, forget about overthinking--you have until midnight Nov 30 to create a 175-page (50,000-word) novel. Think you can do it? I dare you.

Last year, 101,767 writers participated in 2007, yielding 15,335 reported winners. Participants wrote 1,187,931,929 words in 2007, according to the project's website.

Check out the NANOWRIMO site to sign up and for more info. Boy am I ever going to sleep good come December!