NaNoWriMo is that time of year where I fire up Microsoft Word, take the phone off the hook, and stare at a blank document for thirty days.

Now, if you’re confused by a certain term I used in my opening sentence, have no fear! This blog exists to both entertain and educate. You see, a “hook” was the term used to describe the electrical switch and associated external hardware on a vintage telephone. The hook indicated whether the phone line was active or not. Phones today do not have a “hook” per se. In fact, we don’t even have phones anymore. We have portable cameras that can occasionally be used to communicate with other portable camera owners.

Sorry? What’s that? Oh, you already know what a “hook” is? I believe possession of that knowledge is now synonymous with possession of an AARP membership. Ah, okay! You were wondering what “NaNoWriMo” was. My bad…

NaNoWriMo is short for the National Novel Writing Month. And that month is November. The idea is to write a novel (well, a draft of a novel) with a length of at least fifty thousand words in thirty short days. This year marks my tenth attempt.

I’ve decided to dust off a draft I first worked on five years ago. Here’s my placeholder cover:

The story of the story began in May of 2013. I was instant messaging with a coworker on some topic and an idea popped into my head. “Good idea!” I thought at the time. “This might make a good novel!” I did nothing more until that fall when I used it for that year’s NaNo. I only ended up writing about a thousand words a day, falling short of the finish line. Further, it was not well-written in the least bit, but it was — and I can’t stress this enough — a solid foundation for a complete story.

In 2016 I worked on it again for a very short period. And by “worked on” I mean “completely over-thought the plot and headed down a ruinous path.”

As this year’s NaNo approached, and I looked over my list of unfinished projects, I made the decision to dust this one off based on my answer to a single question: “Which unfinished project requires the least preparation?” Ronald won.

I have no idea how things will go, but what I do know is that I will take the month off from blogging. I don’t have many minutes to myself, so I need to focus a bit and make sure I point my spare minutes in the right direction.

Have a great month everyone. See you in December!