Hmm, third post of the week on Wednesday.  Not sure what’s wrong with me this week.  Something must be off…

The week’s theme: NaNoWriMo.  That’s short for National Novel Writing Month.  It happens every November and the challenge is to come up with a first draft of a novel.  Specific you “win” NaNo if you hit 50,000 words by the end of the month.  Most of the members of the Blogenning participate.  I don’t so I guess to fulfill the theme this week, I’m forced to explain myself.

I guess what it really comes down to is that I don’t really like writing and I don’t aspire to be a writer.  I make myself write this blog, among other reasons, because I think being able to write well is an important skill and one that should be practiced.  I think it is too often neglected in this day and age, especially among technical people like me.  If you can’t communicate with others, I don’t know how you expect to get much of anything else worthwhile done.  Still, it’s a chore for me.  While I do think 50,000 words over a month is more doable than most people would think at first glance, I lack the inspiration or motivation to try to get through it.

When I listen to a great piece of music, I find myself instinctively going, man I wish I could do that.  I find a similar motivation for many other things as well.  Not so with writing though.  I admire many great writers and there are are many novels that I absolutely love to death.  When I find even my deepest level of enjoyment from reading though, it doesn’t inspire me to write.

I have a lot of hobbies and there are only so many hours in the day.  Given 100 lifetimes I would want to write a novel.  Given the one I have, I’m ok with not getting around to it.  There are too many other things I’d rather do with my time.

Don’t get me wrong, NaNo is a really cool thing.  A bunch of awesome people around Boston do it.  It’s great for them.  All else being equal, I’d love to spend November hanging out with them more.  It’s not though.  I wish them all best of luck, hope they all have a great time and hope they all get their 50,000 words done.