The National Novel Writing Month web site has opened for 2008, and I have until midnight Halloween night to decide whether or not to take the NaNoWriMo plunge this year.

A bit of background, which will be redundant for those of you who’ve followed this blog in the past: NaNoWriMo is an exercise in which participants commit to try to write a 50,000-word novel (which is a novella, technically) during the month of November. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to write a good novel in that short a time, but “good” is not the first priority of NaNoWriMo participants. The idea is to just write — turn off your internal editor, stop hand-wringing, stop making excuses, stop claiming “writer’s block” and force yourself to spend time each day cranking out the 1,667-word average required to complete the task.

It’s an exhilerating experience, because you will tap into levels of creativity in this setting which you can never achieve while second-guessing yourself.

The finished product will be … rough. Some writers have, in fact, gone back and cleaned up their NaNoWriMo first drafts, turning them into marketable manuscripts. So far, I am not one of them.

I hit the 50,000 mark on my first attempt in 2004. I tried but dropped out early in 2005, and I didn’t try in 2006 because I was heavily involved in rehearsals for a play. Last year, I hit the mark again. I had — and, at some level, still have — high hopes for last year’s effort, a work of fiction inspired by my experiences in short-term foreign mission trips. But I’ve not been able to figure out how to clean the manuscript up and do something with it. A former professor of mine offered to look at the manuscript, and I spent months waiting on her, but she never got to it.

One day, I will turn it into something marketable.

Right now, though, the question is whether I’m going to try to plunge into NaNoWriMo this year. The two years I finished (or “won”) NaNoWriMo, I had ideas that drew heavily on personal experience, with main characters who were somewhat-fictionalized versions of myself. I’d like to do something more creative, but when I tried that in 2005 I came up short pretty quickly.

Whatever I decide, everyone needs to try the NaNoWriMo experience at least once. You can start by signing up at the web site. This allows you to upload your word count, check out “pep talk” e-mails and podcasts, interact with other writers and — if you reach your goal — download a certificate and web graphics indicating so.

If you do go to the site and sign up, be sure to friend me as a novel-writing buddy. My user name is John I. Carney.