# NaNoWriMo 2023

I do this every year. I completely forget about NaNoWriMo until the last week of October, then I get really excited. Then I lump a bunch of plans together, or I reject the notion of planning completely, and then I make it a week in and either lose the thread or I end up writing something where the characters do something that doesn't fit in with the plot I had planned, and I find myself not finishing NaNo, and the story ends up abandoned in my writing repository. Oh, sure, I'll glance at it from time to time and wish that I'd done something different or something like that, but the actual writing portion of that story is done.

This year, I've had some characters rattling around in my brain and they are what I'm going to focus on for the story this year. I want to shove them together in a situation where they can't just walk away and see what happens.

I have a little more than that. One of the characters, Ryall, has a back-story that helps to sketch in a kingdom with a hand-wavey political system. The other character, Lem, has, well, not quite a back-story, but a predilection, as well as maybe a condition, that suggests religion as well as magic. I don't have any idea what kind of magic, not its source or its effects beyond his affliction, but its existence gives me some of what I think I might need to get started.

There are some half-formed thoughts in my head about where they might end up, or what they might end up doing, but I don't want to over-think that right now. I want to start with some characters and see where it goes.

If you're participating in NaNoWriMo this month, good luck and don't forget to stretch your fingers.