NaNoWriMo fun to get you started

Well, since I'm already feeling a little depressed and overwhelmed that today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month 2010 (the same month as our new site launch, plus a pregnancy, trip out of town, parenting, work, my regular writing, and all that — yes, I am that monkey), the least I can do is a little round-up of a few NaNo goodies that have brightened my perspective.

• "Nanowrimo Word Count Desktop" from Domestic Dork: How cute and inspirational is this to have as your desktop image! (Click over to get it full size and download it.)

• And here are a couple that are particularly keen for Mac geeks (like yours truly), because I think this is the year I'm going to jump into writing software (wish me luck):
  
  • Scrivener is offering a free trial version of its writing software for NaNo-ers, a 2.0 preview for Mac users and a beta version for Windows users. Once you win (because of course you'll win, right?), you'll get 50% off the purchase price in December. If by some odd chance you don't, you can get 20% off, which is still nice. And you have the option to save your work in progress to a word processor if you choose not to continue with the software.
    
    Bonus:
    

    "When you launch this NaNo 2010 edition of Scrivener and choose File > New Project, you will find a special NaNoWriMo novel template selected in the "Fiction" section of the project templates chooser. We've put this template together especially for WriMos - it will create a project with the 50,000 word target set up for you and includes the option of exporting a garbled document for uploading to the NaNo servers."

  • Storyist is offering the same: a free trial that will last you through November, but for Macs only. A special code will net you 25% off the purchase price for the downloadable or boxed version.
  
  Now I have to decide which to try out (or which first). I just hope I won't get sucked into the abyss of monkeying around with software and will concentrate on the hard work: getting those words down. What I like about the idea of writing software, at least, is that it might help me organize myself during or after the fact. I had to outline my previous novel after I'd written it so I could more easily move around chunks and see what was missing. It's unwieldy to try to do that with one long Word document. I also had trouble keeping track of characters' names and details (this is true in real life as well…), so I hope the software might help me keep a better log.

• Be sure to download your fun badges and post your widgets. Why participate in NaNo if you don't get to brag about it?

All right, that's all I've got for now. Have fun writing. I still have to get my words in today! As you might be able to tell from my little word count widget in the sidebar that's reading a big fat zero…