Well shit what do I do now?

 Facebook Friend: "I've decided to do NaNoWriMo this year. 50,000 words in 30 days, blahblahblah..."

Me: "I thought of doing that once and writing a story that's sort of a combination of Patrick O'Brian and H.P. Lovecraft. I'd call it Master and Cthulhu."

Friend: "You must! I mean, come on: O'Brian even has a book call The Yellow Admiral which is already *this* close to the Admiral in Yellow. Ocean voyages...sunken cities of madness...this stuff writes itself! You owe it to the world, man! C'mon..do it! All the cool kids are!"

So now I'm thinking about it.   Even slinging bullshit, can I get 50,000 words out in a month?  I must admit, it's very tempting.

And even along the lines of what I discussed above.  I wrote a short piece about 18 months ago that was accepted by a Lovecraft-inspired e-zine.  I even noticed that Crum just found it a couple of weeks back.  I figure a fictitious early 19th Century sea voyage of a ship named Innsmouth from the east coast to the Pacific Northwest - through the mysterious waters of the South Pacific, home to R'lyeh, and the big smelly mud-flat of Lovecraft's Dagon, with some native-bred-to-Deep-One intrigue (linking the Pacific-origin of the "Innsmouth Look" to the ship and the story), apeshit madness and mutiny, and throw in the discovery of some bizzare, artifact-driven combination of celestial navigation and ship propulsion that brings Yog-Sothoth into play and I could probably cobble together 50,000 words of crud under the "No plot, no problem!" mantra.

I must admit, it is tempting...since I'm living 400+ miles from my family and have no friends I have several hours a night.  It would put that 18 month-old blog with just two posts on it to some use.  I'm about 95% sold on the idea of it.

To NoWri or BloPo?

That is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to publish 30 meaningless snippets or spew mounds of daily drivel and by spewing, end writer's block.

..I have two weeks to decide (one if I want to do any planning at all!) whether I want to participate in NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo.

Both are fascinating. On one hand, NaBloPoMo can drive me to plan this thing - set aside days for posting about specific topics, and join neat sub-groups like "Bloggers who wish they had syphilis". On the other hand, the thought of latching onto an idea/plot that excites me, sitting down and writing and not knowing (or caring) where it takes me seems pretty cool, too. I really like the whole "quantity not quality" philosophy there...it's very "American consumer"-ish.

I think both can get me where I want to be; able to more quickly translate thought to keyboard, without second guessing myself out of fear of not getting every little eensie-weensie detail right. My wife is seriously looking at NaNoWriMo; going it alongside her may help us both out. Who knows?

So...the challenge of 6000 words a day, or the challenge of actually thinking about where I want to go with this and making it quasi-meaningful? Aye, there's the rub!